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Isaac Barchas Sees The Next Biotech Boom · Get Real with Jim Weiss

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The conversation with Isaac was really fun. You know. One
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  Speaker 1: of the things that he highlighted that we're focused on
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  Speaker 1: is working with scientists in the middle of the country
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  Speaker 1: versus on the coast. The idea is, though, if we
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  Speaker 1: can tap the science from places like Purdue in Michigan
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  Speaker 1: and ut Southwestern and some of the other places that
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  Speaker 1: Arsenal Bridge Ventures is focused on, we can tap into
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  Speaker 1: what is undiscovered opportunities that could lead to better outcomes
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  Speaker 1: for venture investors and also help build local economies. What
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  Speaker 1: Isaac was saying is that you know, health and wellness
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  Speaker 1: solutions are everywhere. They're not just on the coasts. You know,
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  Speaker 1: the machine learning, the generative AI, all those tools are
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  Speaker 1: being leveraged by all these different universities, and there are
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  Speaker 1: new discovery is coming, you know, from all sorts of places,
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  Speaker 1: and I think that's the richness. You know, we want
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  Speaker 1: to unlock the richness of our country's science, especially the
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  Speaker 1: time when it's getting defunded at the NIH level. We
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  Speaker 1: need to go find it and fund it through the
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  Speaker 1: venture arms, you know, as soon as we can to
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  Speaker 1: improve health for everybody. And you know, it's not just
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  Speaker 1: a coastal thing. It's you know, and there's a lot
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  Speaker 1: of people living in the middle of the country on
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  Speaker 1: top of that, and a lot of talent if you
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  Speaker 1: use expressed. Here are my own personal opinions and do
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  Speaker 1: not represent the views of Arsenal Bridge Ventures or any
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  Speaker 1: fund it manages. Nothing here constitutes investment advice or a
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  Speaker 1: solicitation to invest. All right, Isaac, welcome to get real.
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  Speaker 2: Thank you.
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  Speaker 1: You're out in California for it. So I'd like to
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  Speaker 1: always get into origins, you know, when we start to
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  Speaker 1: get real process. Your dad was an early biotech executive.
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  Speaker 1: Do you attribute your interest in this field to him?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's a it's actually a great origin story.
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  Speaker 2: I haven't thought about it that way before. But he
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  Speaker 2: wasn't even an executive. He was a researcher, right, So
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  Speaker 2: he was a research for.
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  Speaker 1: Sometime researchers or executives, but he wasn't.
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  Speaker 2: And a founder, right, So I'll tell you the story.
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  Speaker 2: So the story is he's a researcher at Stanford University.
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  Speaker 2: He's doing basic neuroscience work what became the Nancy Friend
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  Speaker 2: Pritzker Laboratory for Behavioral Neurochemistry at Stanford. He's doing really
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  Speaker 2: interesting cutting edge neuropsychiatric research, and so he decided. This
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  Speaker 2: was in the early eighties. He decided that he was
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  Speaker 2: going to a couple of his colleagues start up a company,
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  Speaker 2: and he had no idea how to do that. So
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  Speaker 2: he found a guy in Palo Alto who or maybe
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  Speaker 2: the guy pal Alta found him, Tom Barton, who was
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  Speaker 2: a lawyer who did these these sort of entrepreneuris start
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  Speaker 2: ventures out of universities, and Tom taught my dad how
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  Speaker 2: to start a biotech company. So my dad started the
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  Speaker 2: biotech company Scientific Founder, et cetera, et cetera, and ran
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  Speaker 2: that string for a while, doing the lab and doing
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  Speaker 2: the company. And he was always more of a lab guy, right,
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  Speaker 2: you know. His idea was, well, if I do a
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  Speaker 2: company that I can get enough capital to fund my lab,
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  Speaker 2: that would be great. But yeah, I was watching him
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  Speaker 2: do that when I was in my teenage years and
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  Speaker 2: following him around. My mom was sick at the time,
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  Speaker 2: so I was spending a lot of time with my
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  Speaker 2: dad and watching him do what he did and watching
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  Speaker 2: Tom Barton teach him, and I guess teach me how
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  Speaker 2: to do that kind of work was pretty formative for me,
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  Speaker 2: and it was formative, not just because it's cool to
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  Speaker 2: do a company, but because it let me see the
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  Speaker 2: connection between the research and the cure, right, And that's
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  Speaker 2: what these companies are. These companies connect the research in
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  Speaker 2: the cure.
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  Speaker 1: Bo Dooo, Yeah, that's cool. That's a great stride in't actually,
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  Speaker 1: And all the time we've worked together, I didn't really
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  Speaker 1: heard that. So you pivoted away from law and took
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  Speaker 1: a job at McKenzie. Can you talk about how that happened.
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  Speaker 2: It's even worse than majoring in humanities. I majored in
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  Speaker 2: classics Latin and Greek.
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  Speaker 1: Oh jeez, were you going to teach? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: So I was.
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  Speaker 1: It could be here. Yeah, you've got teacher early quality.
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  Speaker 2: So I realized pretty early that I just loved reading
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  Speaker 2: these texts, you know, the Plato and the Xenophon and
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  Speaker 2: all that type of stuff. So graduated from Stanford with
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  Speaker 2: the classics degree, went to work in Chicago for a bit,
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  Speaker 2: ended up in a getting a master's degree from Chicago
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  Speaker 2: at the Committee on Social Thought, and then getting a
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  Speaker 2: law degree and in law school. Loved law school, loved it.
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  Speaker 2: I had never done economics before Chicago law was very
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  Speaker 2: economics heavy, and so I learned about the sort of
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  Speaker 2: power of thinking about the world that way. And then
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  Speaker 2: I would do these summer internships you know that you
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  Speaker 2: do in law school, right, And number one, I was
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  Speaker 2: really bad at it. And number two, I was looking
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  Speaker 2: at the people who we're five seven years ahead of
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  Speaker 2: me in the firms. I don't want I don't want
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  Speaker 2: her job. And so it's got kind of depressed and
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  Speaker 2: started asking around for well, what do I do? And
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  Speaker 2: so one of my colleagues, once again a great advisor,
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  Speaker 2: gave me the advice of try consulting.
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  Speaker 1: I think it was interesting with mackenzie. You were like
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  Speaker 1: dancing in the streets in Chicago, Sydney, Austin, Dallas, Auckland.
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  Speaker 1: What did that? A? Why did you move all over
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  Speaker 1: the place? Is that requirement? But B what did it
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  Speaker 1: teach you that you're using today with businesses? Yeah?
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  Speaker 2: Totally. So you know, in terms of why do all
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  Speaker 2: those geographic moves? Yeah, I mean, you know, McKenzie's a
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  Speaker 2: company like any company, and doing moves is a is
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  Speaker 2: a good thing to do. And you know, at the time,
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  Speaker 2: my family, you know, there were reasons for us to
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  Speaker 2: be in different places and all sorts of things like that.
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  Speaker 2: And Mackenzie was incredibly accommodating on that axis. And you know,
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  Speaker 2: my daughter ended up being born in New Zealand, right,
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  Speaker 2: So now she's back in New Zealand in veterinary school.
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  Speaker 2: So you never know how all this stuff is going
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  Speaker 2: to is going to work out?
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  Speaker 1: Right, You left to run technology incubator at UT From there,
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  Speaker 1: I did why, like, you know, what did you enjoy
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  Speaker 1: about working in a university system? You went to a
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  Speaker 1: cool town that we both know well, Austin, But what
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  Speaker 1: was the impetus? Like? Why do you leave consulting to
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  Speaker 1: do that?
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  Speaker 2: You know, the first question that you asked me was, Hey,
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  Speaker 2: tell me about your dad and tell me about that experience.
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  Speaker 2: And and that the experience of watching my father do
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  Speaker 2: world class science and also be the scientific founder of
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  Speaker 2: a of a biotech company that really stuck with me. Right,
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  Speaker 2: These American universities, the universities that that we have developed
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  Speaker 2: here in this country. You know, that's an industry where
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  Speaker 2: we just leaving.
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  Speaker 1: So was it a tech incubator or a biotech It.
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  Speaker 2: Was a tech incubator and I had start I ended
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  Speaker 2: up starting the biotech program. And you know, okay, we
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  Speaker 2: can we'll talk we'll talk about that. But you know,
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  Speaker 2: universities or is this they're just wellsprings of innovation, right.
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  Speaker 2: You got all these young people floating around and they're innovative,
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  Speaker 2: and you have faculty who are studying things that are signing,
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  Speaker 2: you know, and the one of the real tricks and
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  Speaker 2: I got to watch how hard this is by watching,
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  Speaker 2: you know, my father and his partner, Tom Barton work
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  Speaker 2: on this together. One of the tricks is, well, how
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  Speaker 2: do you bridge what's happening in the university so that
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  Speaker 2: it can be translated into products, services, cures for real people. Right?
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  Speaker 2: And that interface, that interface between innovation and public benefit
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  Speaker 2: is something that's fascinated me since I watched my dad
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  Speaker 2: do what he did. And this was an opportunity, you know,
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  Speaker 2: when I realized it's time for me to leave McKenzie,
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  Speaker 2: it was an opportunity for me to really live at
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  Speaker 2: that interface and to try to shape the way that
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  Speaker 2: at least one great university was thinking about that.
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  Speaker 1: What inspired you to have found research Bridge Partners and
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  Speaker 1: then Arsenal you know that now, Yeah, Arsenal Bridge ven
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  Speaker 1: that we're working on.
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  Speaker 2: So I was at the University of Texas for seven
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  Speaker 2: eight years I think, and over that time we had
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  Speaker 2: an opportunity not just to work at Texas, but because
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  Speaker 2: of some of the stuff we were doing, and we
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  Speaker 2: got to look at other schools that were also major
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  Speaker 2: research schools in the middle of the country, right, mostly
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  Speaker 2: Big ten and Texas schools, and it just became clear
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  Speaker 2: that what we were observing in Austin. Austin is a
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  Speaker 2: pretty sophisticated ecosystem, but even Austin isn't Silicon Valley. As
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  Speaker 2: a result, I and a friend of mine from college,
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  Speaker 2: Read Hoffman, who founded LinkedIn, we decided to start a
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  Speaker 2: not for profit focused on identifying labs at places like
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  Speaker 2: Texas or Purdue or Syracuse, which if those labs were
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  Speaker 2: at Harvard or MIT, they'd be people all over them, right,
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  Speaker 2: But because they're at Purdue or wherever else, they're not.
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  Speaker 2: And as a result, it's not just that the companies
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  Speaker 2: don't get formed, the research doesn't get nudged a little
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  Speaker 2: bit this way or a little bit that way so
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  Speaker 2: that you can move a little bit more towards the market.
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  Speaker 2: And that's why we started Research Bridge Partners.
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean, how is that model changing the
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  Speaker 1: fact that coastal places like Silicon Valley, you know, South
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  Speaker 1: San Francisco, Boston dominate biotech and you know, to a
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  Speaker 1: large degree tech, although I do feel like Austin and
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  Speaker 1: some of those places have a tech yeah, you know, bent,
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  Speaker 1: but not so much biotech. Let's you know, let's start
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  Speaker 1: with Research Bridge and then move into Arsenal. How is
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  Speaker 1: that evolving? And why is this thesis? Why does it
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  Speaker 1: make sense?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah? So moving from the not for profit to the
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  Speaker 2: for profit, from Research Bridge Partners to Arsenal Bridge Ventures,
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  Speaker 2: where you and I are currently partners. That happened as
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  Speaker 2: we learn more, right, you know, people, businesses evolve and
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  Speaker 2: you learn things. And one of the things that we
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  Speaker 2: learned at Research Bridge Partners is that we needed to
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  Speaker 2: have capital to form these enterprises. But more than capital,
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  Speaker 2: we needed the right incentives around that capital to make
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  Speaker 2: sure that it was being spent correctly.
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  Speaker 1: Right.
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  Speaker 2: So, basically, every university in America now has seed fund programs,
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  Speaker 2: et cetera. But what they don't have are the incentive
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  Speaker 2: structures that are provided by venture capital. The thing that
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  Speaker 2: venture does uniquely well is align people around a project, right,
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  Speaker 2: align people around taking research and turning it into a cure.
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  Speaker 2: So we realized that we needed to.
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  Speaker 1: Are there a lot of cures? You mentioned cures, that's
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  Speaker 1: the goal. Are there a lot of cures?
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  Speaker 2: Well, you know we're We just spun up this company
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  Speaker 2: last year out of the University of Michigan on the
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  Speaker 2: for profit sided with ABB And you know you were
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  Speaker 2: involved in this where there is a there a subset
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  Speaker 2: of people in America in the world who are born
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  Speaker 2: without the full compment of a certain gene, and that
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  Speaker 2: means that they don't have the receptors to be able
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  Speaker 2: to receive certain proteins that regulate certain important bodily functions.
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  Speaker 2: And the company that we built and we can talk
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  Speaker 2: more about this company later, the company that came out
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  Speaker 2: of this fantastic lab at the University of Michigan is
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  Speaker 2: basically manufacturing the key to fit into that lock. So
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  Speaker 2: I think that's a case where if that company is successful,
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  Speaker 2: it's going to be successful because it's actually curing a disease, right,
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  Speaker 2: versus say, for example, the glps, which are unbelievable drugs
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  Speaker 2: and super effective, which are treating the symptoms of various
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  Speaker 2: other conditions, right, which is still super important. But I'm
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  Speaker 2: probably using the word cure in a broader sense. It's
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  Speaker 2: not just curing the underlying condition, and I think we're
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  Speaker 2: moving to a place where we can do more of that.
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  Speaker 2: It's all so having enough symptom relief that effectively the
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  Speaker 2: person can live a normal life as though he or
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  Speaker 2: she were not diseased.
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  Speaker 1: So jumping off that, why invest in biotech and cures
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  Speaker 1: right now?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, I think that there are two big
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  Speaker 2: paths that you can take that answer on right and
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  Speaker 2: one of them is ethical and moral and what it
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  Speaker 2: means to be human and how we live our lives
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  Speaker 2: in the side of God, and that is suffering is
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  Speaker 2: awful and disease is awful. I know that you've lost
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  Speaker 2: people who you love. I've lost people who I love.
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  Speaker 2: Everybody listening to this podcast, unfortunately, is going to have
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  Speaker 2: stories about disease impacting their family. And we have as
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  Speaker 2: a people, as a species, we have a duty to
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  Speaker 2: try to cure those diseases to alleviate that kind of suffering.
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  Speaker 2: And the way that suffering is best alleviated is through
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  Speaker 2: these amazing new products that are the that are the
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  Speaker 2: outcome of human innovation being translated into the marketplace, and
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  Speaker 2: we're able to use the structures of the market and
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  Speaker 2: of capitalism to produce those new cures. That's one answer.
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  Speaker 2: One answer is it's an ethical and moral responsibility, and
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  Speaker 2: I think for guys like you and me, it's easier
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  Speaker 2: for us to get up out of bed in the
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  Speaker 2: morning and go to work because of that. The other
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  Speaker 2: answer is just in terms of, hey, let's be purely
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  Speaker 2: capitalist about this. It's a great place to make money,
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  Speaker 2: right if you get it right. High risk, high volatility.
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  Speaker 2: A lot of this innovation that looks great in the
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  Speaker 2: lab is never going to even make it into people,
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  Speaker 2: much less be validated in human models. It's a really
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  Speaker 2: tough thing to do to get inside biology and move
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  Speaker 2: biology around. We can talk more about that, but if
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  Speaker 2: you're able to do that, the returns can be really impressive.
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  Speaker 2: You know the way, and I think you've talked about
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: this in past episodes of this podcast. The way that
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: the pharmaceutical industry works is pharma companies invest literally billions
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: of dollars bringing a new drug to market. Then they
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  Speaker 2: have a limited time where they have exclusivity on that drug,
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  Speaker 2: meaning they can market it without competition, and then that
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  Speaker 2: time expires. But it expires instead of getting a dollar revenue,
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  Speaker 2: they get ten cents of revenue, or maybe twenty cents revenue,
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  Speaker 2: or maybe thirty cents of revenue. But that revenue cliff,
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  Speaker 2: that loss of exclusivity cliff, is what drives the behavior
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  Speaker 2: of these large pharma companies to do M and A.
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  Speaker 2: And we've seen, you know, we're seeing an enormous amount
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  Speaker 2: of M and A in the market right now because
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  Speaker 2: there is over three hundred billion dollars of revenue at
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: risk of loss of exclusivity. So this is a case
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  Speaker 2: where I think that you've got these incentives of capitalism
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  Speaker 2: aligning with our incentives as humans to try to produce.
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  Speaker 1: Bigger drugs, you know. So that's like Humera in the past,
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  Speaker 1: but now do Picks and Truda and a lot of
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  Speaker 1: others you know that are so well known yet you know,
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  Speaker 1: are facing some of that. Some of them will withstand it,
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  Speaker 1: you know, through their own smart movements. But it does
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  Speaker 1: seem like farmers on a frenzy to acquire.
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  Speaker 2: It's an interesting industry because it's a perpetual flywheel, right,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it's it never stops. The loss of exscassivity
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  Speaker 2: never stops. But it's not as though that cliff ever
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  Speaker 2: goes away just because of the structure of it.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like in all the years I've worked, there's always.
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  Speaker 2: A cliff exactly. And that's one of the things I
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  Speaker 2: think that makes biotech attractive versus some other types of
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  Speaker 2: venture capital deployment because that flywheel that after that M
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  Speaker 2: and a flywheel, or licensing an M and a flywheel,
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  Speaker 2: it never stops.
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  Speaker 1: And we need that healthy venture capability here to keep
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  Speaker 1: that innovation coming right, because it's not coming from pharma.
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  Speaker 1: Pharma does the trials and they mark good stuff, right,
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  Speaker 1: but do they really innovate.
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  Speaker 2: As the biotech industry has developed. What we've what's happened
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  Speaker 2: over the past thirty years or so, is that the
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: big pharma companies are really focusing on the extremely expensive
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: parts of the value chain, right, clinical trials, marketing, et cetera.
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  Speaker 2: The stuff that's super educating the customers, educating doctors, all
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  Speaker 2: of that, and that's extremely important. And they are feeding
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  Speaker 2: their pipelines through mergers and acquisitions and licensing, and that
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  Speaker 2: is a trend that just keeps going up. So if
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  Speaker 2: you think about twenty sixteen versus last year, there's been
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  Speaker 2: about a three x increase in the volume of m
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  Speaker 2: A and L coming into big pharma because of that flywheel.
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  Speaker 2: And that's a dynamic in our industry that I think
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  Speaker 2: is under remarked on and is really important for biotech
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: transitioning into value for its early investors.
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  Speaker 1: Great, great point. I want to come back to, you know,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: one of the differentiators of Arsenal bridge, why is it
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: crucial to deploy capital in places traditional venture capital has overlooked.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, we talked about flyover, but yeah, you know,
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  Speaker 1: why is that important and can you know, can it
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  Speaker 1: serve you know, certain states, you know, economic innovation agendas?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely so once again two part answer to this.
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  Speaker 2: The first answer is we have a in this country,
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: a geographically diffuse research base, but a geographically concentrated commercialization base. Right,
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  Speaker 2: So if you think about where the NIH dollars flow,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: they're flowing all over the country. You know, Harvard maybe
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: getting more than some other schools, but the bulk of
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  Speaker 2: NIH dollars, of research dollars that come out of our
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: taxes are being deployed in places that aren't the Berry
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  Speaker 2: in Boston.
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  Speaker 1: I thought I was going to defense, and there's not
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  Speaker 1: much left in the.
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  Speaker 2: NA And that's something we should probably talk about too.
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  Speaker 2: And if we are going to continue to have the
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: especially in a declining funding environment, if we're going to
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  Speaker 2: continue to enjoy the fruits of American innovation, we have
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: to cast our commercialization net more widely, right. We need
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: to make sure that the best innovation out of Syracuse
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: or Purdue, or Michigan or Texas is getting commercialized. So
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  Speaker 2: I think that's part of the answer. The other part
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  Speaker 2: of the answer, frankly, for the people who've trusted us
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: with their money, is it because there are different dynamics
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: in some of these smaller markets. It's possible to have
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: different business building agendas, right, that can start from a
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: more realistic early valuation and build towards something that's a
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: little bit richer. And that's good for everybody, right. That's
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: good for the founders, it's good for the people who
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: come in to run the company. It's good for the investors.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: There is one point that I want to emphasize, which
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: is that what we do in arsenal Bridge Ventures, as
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: you know because you've been involved in doing this with us,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: what we do in arsenal Bridge Ventures is source innovation
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: from places that aren't Boston, in San Francisco. Once that
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: innovation is sourced and once we build a company around it,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: that company might stay in Austin or it might move
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: to California.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: Which I was going to ask the question, does it
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: have to stay where it is or can it be
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: start there and move out? I mean it's probably a
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: little bit of both.
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: But yeah, I mean, I think that we have an
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: ethical duty to make sure that the companies that we're
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: starting off of this innovation have the best chance to
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: translate that innovation into cures for diseases. And if that
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: means staying where they are, that's great. If that means
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: going to San Francisco or Boston or Seattle or wherever else,
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: that's great. The key factor, Jim, is less where is
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: the science coming from? And it's more where are the
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: executives that can take this science forward? Right right? Sometimes
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: those are going to be in place, sometimes those are
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: going to be other places.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: I mean, do you think that you know, our model
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: unlocks opportunities for the non elite college towns and cities
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: outside traditional biotech markets at large? Too? It's you know flourish.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, is there a world where that happens, where
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: new biotech capitals spring up.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You know, think about think about the students who are
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: working in the labs that we are working with at
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: places like Purduer Michigan. If those students who are going
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: to be really good students, because you know, the best
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: labs at Purduer is good as the best labs anywhere.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: The best students at Michigan or as good as the
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: best students anywhere, right, So the best students working in
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: the best labs at places like Purdue in Michigan or Syracuse,
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: those are students who, if they were at Stanford would
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: have opportunities to experience what commercialization means, right, that they
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: probably can't get if they're not in one of the
• 21:12
  Speaker 2: big biotech hups. What our investments do, at the very
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: least is provide those students, right with those opportunities and
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: with that knowledge. And if you're thinking about, hey, what
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: does a state care about, right, what does a region
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: care about? You know, one of the things they care
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: about is capital deployment, jobs, et cetera, et cetera. But
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: what are you doing with your human capital? And I
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: think that part of what we are doing the effect
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: of our thesis no matter where these companies end up right,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: is that the students who are working undergrads and graduates
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: who are working in these labs that we're working with
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: are getting experience that is exactly analogous to the experience
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: that their colleagues at Stanford or MIT would be getting
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: on that axis, and that's going to make them, is
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: going to open opportunities for them that they wouldn't have
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: had otherwise, and that redounced the benefit of everybody.
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: Well, let's make it real for the people listening. What's
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the timeline from finding the university scientists and their innovation
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: to investing in it, creating the company, and ultimately bringing
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: it to market. Doesn't that take forever? Isn't that like
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: a ten twenty year thing.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: The point that you're making is one that we hear
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: a lot, which is, hey, you know, one of the
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: problems with biotech is that biotech takes forever, and you
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: know it's it's just by the time you sort of
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: factor in the cost of capital and ten years and
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: everything like that, I've got like a nickel of return
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: on my investment.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Right, we heard that today?
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: Right, yeah, exactly exactly. So one of the nice effects
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: of our thesis, the thesis of Arsenal Bridge Ventures where
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: we are going to we're sourcing our deals from geographies
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: that are less dynamic commercially than the Bay Area in Boston.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: We are therefore able to come in with valuations that
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: are a bit more realistic, and that means that we're
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: also able to drive to value more quickly.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: So you know, an example, we just last month actually
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: we ended up fully distributing one of our early SPVs
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: and that was an investment that we made in twenty
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: twenty three, and we now have one hundred percent distribution
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. And that's cool, right, twenty twenty three
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: investment that company was still fully pre clinical, right and
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: being and then they in the use that investment to
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: go public and then you know, are that we're now
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: able to provide liquidity. That's something that I think disciplined
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: investing can do.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: More.
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: Of what we're doing, Jim, is not making better on science.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: What we're doing is building companies that can attract the
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: best executives in the country. And we're really making bets
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: on those companies and those executives ability to generate value
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: in cures.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Well, that makes sense because unless it becomes you know,
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: we talk about vision without execution and hallucination. So if
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: you don't have all that, you know, if you don't
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: have those groups that bring it into reality, as we
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: talk about here a lot because investors are looking for
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: liquidity and fast returns or faster returns, does a model
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: like this deliver that? Is that the right way to
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: think about it? Or is that setting expectations?
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: Well, look, all I can say is historically we have
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: you know, so it's it's interesting and I don't know
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: if this is something we'll get into more later. But
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: biotech and tech have different investment philosophies and they sort
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: of feel feel very different. One of the ways they
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: feel different is that history orally, with tech, you identify
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: a problem, you find a team that you think can
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: move against that problem effectively, and then they figure out
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: what the technology is they need to be able to
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: solve the problem. In biotech, it's traditionally been you find
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: an asset, you make a bet on that asset, and
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: then you hire people in to babysit the asset until
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: it crest.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we saw one of those today, right, Bline came
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: out of one of the venture firms. Then you know
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: that you know they bought a bunch of assets from
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: yeah bms right, and put a team around it.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: And it's that second, that second part that I think
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: that too many biotech investors miss is putting the team around.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Well, good, let's stay there a big focus on government
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: and board construction. You know, why does finding the best
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: CEO on board matter so much?
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: It's just so hard because biotech is hard. Business is
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: hard to begin with. I mean, this podcast is basically
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: about how hard business is right and how you have
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: to make you have to make difficult decisions as yours
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: as you move through it, because business is an enormous
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: amount of fun. It's you know, it allows us to
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: express parts of our souls that we can't express otherwise.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: And it's really really hard to get right. And the
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: thing about biotech is too often I think we just
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: sort of assume that the asset is kind of going
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: to grow like a seat, and it doesn't. It never does.
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not away. I mean, there's nothing that
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: we've invested in that has grown linearly from Okay, we
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: thought we had X, and then we have X plus
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: a bit and plus a bit and plus a bit,
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: and then finally boom, we have it's like, well we
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: have X, Oh we've learned something about X. It turns
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: out if we combine X with Y, we have something
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: that's really cool. Or maybe it turns out that if
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: we actually drop X and this why thing is really interesting.
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: So what you need is you need dynamic leadership that's
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: capable of going on that journey with the company and
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: creating value.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: And you can't watch pot never boils, right, and you can't. Yeah,
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: you have to actually have to be stirring the thing right, right,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: you know, and so love just throw the pod. Yeah,
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: And as a result, you need to have governance and
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: executive leadership to provide that right because the science is
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: not going to commercialize itself, and often the science ends
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: up that you think you're commercializing ends up being a
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: little bit of what you commercialize.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: But it earns you the right to go on the
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: journey and to learn more and to build something that
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: does become a cure.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: It's not a traditional draw for biotech investing, where things
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: typically take longer or more unpredictable and more innovative to science.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Do you think tech This is what I wanted to
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: ask when you mentioned the tech thing and how different
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: they are particularly AI will change the game where we
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: identify and realize success or failure more quickly.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: I think that spending some time on AI and biotech
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: and the it's like we've been on two highways and
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: the two highways emerging a bit. Yeah, I think it's
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: really really interesting. So let me give you my perspectives.
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: And I know we've talked about this offline, and we
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: talked about with their third partner all the time, because
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: the way that AI intersects what we're doing is so
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: it's already so important for what you and I do
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: when we work together. The first thing i'd say is
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: in terms of specifically how AI is going to inflect biotech,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: I don't know. And I think at this stage, you know,
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: we can say things that are directional. I think the
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: speed comment is dead right right. I think that we're
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: likely going to see a compression of timelines.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: Right and making faster calls on go no, go right.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I think it'll give predictively.
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: I so here's my guess. And once again, you know,
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: at this point nobody knows. So the people who have
• 28:41
  Speaker 2: strong visions or either visionaries or fools, and it's hard
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: to tell them a part of the stage, right. But
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: at this stage, I think two things are going to happen. One,
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: I think that eventually AI is going to help us
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: understand biology better, and by understanding biology better, we're going
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: to be able to do the work of biotech more effectively.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: The second thing, and I think this is under remarked on,
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: is AI is going to give people more confidence to
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: say no. Right. So one of the challenges, one of
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: the challenges in biotech is that there is a lot
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: of momentum behind yes decisions and it's hard to inject no's.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: And I think that AI is going to give people
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: a bit more steel in the spine to make some
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: no calls. And I think that's going to be great
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: for the industry. It's going to both reduce timelines and
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: accelerate the redistribution of capital.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: The better projects, and the duck just keeps getting better
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: and faster.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Biotech is one of the earliest adopters of AI. Now,
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: large language models, you know, biotech isn't using that as much,
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: and it's interesting why not. And one of the reasons
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: why not, by the way, but I say not using it,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: what I mean is not using it in core discovery applications.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: Right as opposed to in all the support applications.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: But one of the reasons like supply chain and manufacturing
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: and administration.
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because biotech, Because fundamentally, biotech businesses are businesses and
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: their manufacturing businesses, and you know, you and I are
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: into all the cool science, but there's so much of
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: the company that's not that. So, you know, when I
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: think about why biotech is why we have not seen
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: more of a takeoff of large language models and the
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: core drug discovery and drug development functions through the in biotech,
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: I think there are a couple of reasons. One of
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: them is it's still earlier. We're still figuring it out. Okay,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: that's one. But two is we just don't know that
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: much biology. I mean, as a species, we don't know
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: that much biology. You know, chat, GPT and Claude and
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: Gemini and all these other large language models, they were
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: trained on a pretty decent approximation of everything that has
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: ever been written or said since the invention of the
• 30:49
  Speaker 2: printing press. Right in biology, we don't have that, right,
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: we don't have that. I mean, you know, you've been
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: in the industry a long time. I've been in the
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: one of the most common things in a biotech company
• 31:03
  Speaker 2: is you observe an experimental result and people say, oh,
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: that's interesting, why is that happening? And we don't know yet.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: We haven't figured it out. There's so many different feedback
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: loops and complicated processes. We are very good in pharma
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: at drugging diseases where there's something in the body that
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: shouldn't be there right, like a cancer cell, or in
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: putting something into the body that the body should be
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: making but it's not making right, you know, the classic
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: lock and key therapies. So what we're not good at is, well,
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: this is kind of complicated. You know, there are more
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: serotonin receptors in the gut than there are in the brain,
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: and we know that serotonin's important and a whole bunch
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: of neurological and psychiatric conditions, but we don't really know
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: how that feedback loop works. And if I give a
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and what am I actually really inhibiting
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: in what's that doing? That is all stuff that we
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: just don't know yet. And I think it's going to
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: be challenging for us to directly apply AI large language
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: model type AI until we expand the frontier of knowledge
• 32:04
  Speaker 2: a bit more. One of the things I'm most excited
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: about there for is using large language models in AI
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: to help us expand the frontier of knowledge. Right, So,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: taking this conversation back to universities, one of the things
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: that I'm personally watching is how the researchers whose job
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: it is to discover new knowledge, not to develop drugs,
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: but to discover new knowledge, how they are incorporating AI
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: to reduce their cycle times and make themselves more productive.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: This is a classic case of if technology is able
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: to make the upstream innovation engine more productive, that's going
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: to have flow through all the way through the industry.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Why is the last question on this topic? And then
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: I have a couple of fun ones. You start up.
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: You know, first of all, there couldn't be a harder
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: time to raise money, period, but in biotech even more so,
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: Perhaps why is a first time fund needed? And why
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: should people you know, gravitate toward this versus the traditional
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: funds that have been out there. I know you're always
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: positive about them, but there's something about those where you
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: know my theory and maybe correct me if I'm wrong,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: is that there's more upside to the smaller startup where
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you also get more visibility and interaction versus these other
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: bigger one. Yeah.
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: So I think there's an industry structure argument as too,
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: as to why now. And one of the things that's
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: happened since COVID is that the there has been less
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: capital in general flowing into new biotech funds, and much
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: much more of that capital is flowing into very large funds.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: So in the five years before twenty twenty, I think
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: that very large funds, so say six hundred million dollars,
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: I think is the cutoff we use in this analysis.
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: So funds of six hundred million dollars are more accounted
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: for about eleven percent of the capital raised in the
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: five years leading up to twenty twenty. Since twenty twenty,
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: it's been about seventy one percent. So what you're seeing
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: in the industry is the rise of these megafunds who
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: are soaking up more and more capital. Which is great.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: They're run by really smart people and they're doing really
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: good work. But if you think about the dynamics of
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: a fund that has a billion dollars or three billion
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: dollars under management, moving the dial on that fund, you've
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: actually got to deploy big slugs of capital. And I'll
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: be honest, that makes it tough to deploy five million
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: bucks at a time, right, And you and I know
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: how much work it takes to take those early stage,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: seed stage five million dollar investments and turn them into
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: something that is worthwhile. I think that structurally that's just challenging.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: So there is less capital available for early stage and
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: this is happening at the same time that for all
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: the reasons we were just talking about in terms of
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: new technologies, the innovation level is going up, right, So
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: there's less capital available at the earliest stages. There's more
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: good science at the earliest stages, right, And as a result,
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: there's really a place that we can play right there
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: at that intersection of having a fund that is appropriately
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: sized to deploy at that juncture where the step ups
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: are going to be free. So what's the size one
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty million dollars? So I think that, I mean,
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: if I were not to not to sell my own
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: and why that number sell my own book? But I
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: think if you get over about you're here to solve
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: the book. If you if I was an LP looking
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: at investing in a biotech fund, and I wanted to
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: buy the kind of risk and reward that is profiled
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: in a really good biotech fund. I would be looking
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: at a seed stage fund because the step ups from
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: seed to A and then from pre clinical to clinical
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: or the big step ups. Do you want to be
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: able to capture those? And I would be looking at
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: a fund of under two hundred and fifty million dollars,
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: probably about two hundred maybe a little bit less. And
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: the reason for that size criterion is that you want
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: the managers to be incentivized to deploy appropriate amounts of capital.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: You don't want to overfeed your earliest deals, right, You
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: want have been centivized to deploy appropriate amounts of capital
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: in really good early deals. And I think that the
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: fund that we have set up has the physics to
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: be able to do that. Now, once you decide, okay,
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: this is a good time to buy biotech because of
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: industry structure reasons, and market's been down a little bit,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: and so it's always better to buy low and then
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: sell high, et cetera.
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: Markets up right now, Market's up now, but you know
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: it's what's up Today's gone tomorrow.
• 36:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So by the way, the biotech market's up
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: but the biotech VC market.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: Is downright, you know, so well yeah so and that
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: we well, M and as driving a lot of it.
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: But there was some great results you know from Revolution Medicine,
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: you know, on on pancreatic cancer, which were later stage,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: which kind of revitalized the promise of this whole space.
• 37:01
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, and Sileno got bought by right by
• 37:04
  Speaker 2: you know, by Neurocrine for two point nine billion in cash,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: and you know, and we're seeing lots of success all
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: this M and A activity on billion dollar m and
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: A activity in the in the the obesity and weight
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: loss space. You know, this is the the by the way,
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: the amount of money that has been deployed in big
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: company licensing, so small companies licensing their technologies into big companies,
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: has tripled since twenty sixteen. Right, so that curve just
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: keeps going up. And so you know, once once you
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: sort of recognize, hey, for that reason, you know, we've
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: got the loss of excivity, Cliff, you have an increase
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: in licensing. You know, you've got the stage reason to
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: want to invest early, et cetera.
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Okay, so that means I'm probably looking at a one
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: hundred and fifty two hundred million dollar fund. Then at
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: that point you need to start vetting managers, and we
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: think we're pretty competitive on that basis.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Amazing. All right, well, look, what's something you're getting real
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: honest about lately?
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: I'm getting I'm actually getting really honest about my reading.
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: And I'm in a book club with my daughter and Wow,
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: with my girlfriend, and we are reading novels. It's a
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: novel's book club. And it's making me realize. We started
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: this conversation talking about the humanities in Latin and Greek,
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: and it's making me realize that if I want to
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: train myself to be better at business, about the best
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: way I can do that is to read really good literature.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: And that's something that's a little bit confronting to me,
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: because I'd fallen off of reading literature up until recently,
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: and I'm now back into that, and I'm realizing I
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: need to be humble and I need to just suck
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: up that activity, which is an enjoyable activity, but it's
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: also hard work, right it is. You know, we started
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: the conversation talking about majors and Syracuse dropping humanities and
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: all that type of stuff. I really don't think it
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: matters what you major in. What matters is that you
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: spend that time working on hard problems, right, And a
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: physics problem can be a hard problem, But you know what,
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: a poem can be a hard problem too. Write that
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: and it can be a problem that is actually more
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Germane to the work you're going to be doing, because
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: if you unlock great literature, especially great IMAGINEI of literature,
• 39:34
  Speaker 2: I think that you're training yourself to be able to
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: interact in a thoughtful and deep manner with other humans
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: in complicated situations. And that is really the essence of
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: growing value in a business.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Wow, So read more. I guess reading page six doesn't count.
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: I always depends what's on cage six.
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: Well, anyway, if there's an album that it's the soundtrack
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: to your life, what is that?
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to give you, uh, I'm going to
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: give you two answers. The answer that I that I
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: would have given pretty straightforwardly is Abby wrote, and I've
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: just gotten to a point in my life where it's
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: there's something about that album, which is it's a great album.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: The B side, of course, especially with the medley, is
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: absolutely amazing. You're starting from here comes the Sun and
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: going all the way through to her majesty is a
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: pretty nice girl. The album is terrific, but what it
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: contains for me is a notion of friendship, love, beauty,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: infinitude because it's the last one. And you know that
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: the dynamics that we're leading to that breakup were present
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: in that album at the same time that the intimacy
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: and genius was present in that album.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: I can add to that, what's the best vacation you've
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: ever taken or you're planning?
• 41:09
  Speaker 2: The best vacation was going down to visit my daughter
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: in New Zealand. I mentioned that she is in veterinary
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: school in Palmerston, North and New Zealand, and that was
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: wonderful vacation. But I do want to mention one other
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: thing which was not exactly vacation. But when I was
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: in college, our college had a summer program where you
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: did archaeology in Greece and doing that work with those
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: people who are wonderful people, contributing to those problems which
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: were important problems, and having the sense of being literally
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: deep in humanity. Right you know, I think that it's
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: so easy, especially for us right now, to live right
• 41:51
  Speaker 2: now all the time and that experience gave me a
• 41:56
  Speaker 2: sense of being connected twenty five hundred years back in time,
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: finding things that had last touched a human hand two
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: thousand years ago, and realizing that human hand would look
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: just like my hand, and that the man or woman
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: who made that thing or carried that thing, or used
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: that thing would be using it just the way I
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: would use it. Incredibly powerful for it it is powerful.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: I think that was one of the reasons I thought place.
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: You know, going to places like there in Israel, and
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: you know some of these places that are a lot
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: older than where we live. You know, I'm not say
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: there weren't other civilizations here. There were, but that I think, yeah,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: that's super powerful and very positively humbling.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: I think my favorite the question you haven't asked, so
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: as you live in New York, what's your favorite object
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: in the Metropolitan Museum? My favorite, My favorite object of
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: the Metropolitan Museum is a rock, and it is a
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: They have a small collection of hand axis, which was
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: the dominant technology that humans used for hundreds of thousands
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: of years, right, And they have on display a very
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: large hand ax, which clearly is a piece of art.
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's it has the shape of it. If
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: you tried to scrape something, it would break, et cetera.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: I mean, it is beautiful, and it was pretty clearly
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: made to have to hold symbolic value as well as
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: utility or instead of utility value. And Jim, the amazing
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: thing about that is it's somewhere between three hundred thousand
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: five hundred thousand years old, which means it wasn't even
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: Homo sapiens that made it. It was some other genus
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: or species of Homo. And the fact that that is
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: so deep in our genome. You know, this entire conversation
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: has been about innovation and turning innovation into things that
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: matter in lives. That impulse is so deep in our
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: genome that even before we are who we are, we
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: have that. That's why it's my favorite object.
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: Awesome dropped the mind.
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Thanks Isaac, Thank you, Jim.
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: More to come. Hey everyone, thanks for watching. I really
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: appreciate that you take the time to listen to this
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: and tune in, so please subscribe follow I've got a
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: lot of amazing guests. You're gonna learn a lot and
• 44:17
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