The Pomp Podcast - #1382 Kian Sadeghi | This Man Measures Your Intelligence Gene

Episode Date: July 11, 2024

Kian Sadeghi is the Founder & CEO of Nucleus Genomics. In this conversation, we talk about DNA sequencing, how he is disrupting the old school companies, why he believes so much in giving power to the people, taking control of your health with your DNA, regulation, ethics, and more.  ======================= CrossFi is the Apple Pay for Crypto. For the first time in history, anyone with a web 3 wallet like Metamask can spend crypto through a physical or virtual visa cards anywhere in the world where Visa is accepted. Be one of the first to get your hands on a CrossFi card and a prize pool of $3 Million Dollars by joining and participating in their testnet today: ⁠⁠https://xfi.foundation/users⁠⁠ ======================= BetOnline.ag is a proud sponsor of the the Pomp Podcast. Use crypto to bet on sports, play poker and enjoy casino games at BetOnline. Visit ⁠⁠https://promotions.betonline.ag/pomp⁠⁠ and use promo code POMP100 to receive a 100% matching bonus on any crypto deposit. BetOnline boasts no crypto transaction fees, and processing is anonymous, instantaneous and secure. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 265,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/ ======================= View 10k+ open startup jobs: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://dreamstartupjob.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Enroll in my Crypto Academy: https://www.thecryptoacademy.io/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. So it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. What's up guys? Today I have a fantastic conversation. It is with Kian Sadeghi. He is the founder and CEO of Nucleus Genomics. In this conversation, we talk about DNA sequencing,

how he is disrupting the old school companies, why he believes so much in giving power to the people, sharing your DNA information with yourself so that you're better informed and empowered to go and make decisions about your health and what you do on a day-to-day basis. This conversation is very interesting because it covers so many different nuances of the industry. There's things like regulation, ethics, and science that all come to a head, and they struggle with daily inside of the business. On top of that, it's quite expensive to try to build the leading genomic startup in the United States, and they're doing a fantastic job of trying to balance capital requirements and also finding the best talent. These conversations are always fun to me. Kian is someone that I've known

for a while. I've invested in the company and I continue to watch him struggle with all of these questions and then come out the other side with the answers for him and his company. I really hope that you enjoy this conversation. Here is my episode with Kian Sadeghi. Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Today's episode is brought to you by CrossFi. CrossFi

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Bet online. The game starts here. Betonline.ag. Go check them out today. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Keon here. where you're trying to do something that no one's ever done before, which is take this DNA

information that everyone knows is possible. They've seen some of the competitors that are out there, but you're trying to give the information to the people, which I think is a very interesting detail because most people don't know that the companies that you've previously given your DNA to, they're withholding information from you. They are not telling you everything that they know about you. So in a weird way, these other companies know more about their customers than their customers know about themselves is that true i think there's multiple layers to this right one is a technological limitation that these old companies had another is an ideological limitation let's start the technological one um you know when companies like 23 got started in 2006

the cost of sequencing the entirety of someone's dna or six billion letters that makes up someone's genome genome just means the entirety of someone's dna um it was around 10 million dollars per sample 10 million dollars per person that's insane that's obviously not economic so instead what they did is is they opted for a much cheaper technology called microwave technology. This technology looks at less than 0.1% of someone's DNA, right? Today, that cost has gone from $10 million per sample to look at less than 0.1% of DNA to around, you know, 399, basically, to read the entirety of someone's DNA, all 6 billion genomes. So the first thing that you should know is that nucleus has far more data, right? We actually can analyze much more. And by analyzing much more, we can give

people the entirety of basically the scientific frontier of insights into their genome for more accurate assessments of their disease risk, as well as their trait dispositions. So, the cost has come down significantly, which is a huge advantage. Huge advantage for the company, yes. Now, that's easy for people to understand economics. Yes. There's an ideological predisposition that they have, which basically means they believe things that maybe you and I don't believe.

Yes. What do they believe and why are they maybe misplaced in those beliefs? You know, I think there's a bit of a conservatism when it comes to genetics. And I really believe that part of Nucleus' job is to empower people with information. There are studies done at the scientific frontier in the genetic architecture for things like intelligence, as an example. And these are studies, you know, they're published in the most esteemed scientific journals. they're they're done by you know some of the most esteemed private institutions in america and also

worldwide and they basically start exploring the genetic architecture of what some might say might be more controversial traits and i think it's our job as a company instead of sort of having this information gatecapped when it's really public in the public you know domain it's in hands of the people it's to provide people access to these sort of insights while also being still thoughtful i think we can be focused on acceleration, while also not that doesn't necessarily mean that we have to be reckless, right? I think it's about empowering people with this knowledge, educating them today about what exists in the genomic frontier, and then how it's going to evolve over time. Now, as you go into the frontier, there are things that are very controversial with these

legacy companies in terms of what potentially is possible. When you and I first met, I think I asked you some version of a question of, okay, great. Like, why are you different in doing all of this? And you explained the costs and the ideological stuff, but you also started to talk about there may be genes that people historically have thought didn't exist. Maybe they do exist. And maybe we don't actually know for sure or not, but it's worth pursuing. Intelligence gene, gay gene, right? Many of these things that again are almost in some degree, you know, certain scientists who say absolutely not it's you know heresy to even talk about it and you you uh if you believe it you are just like some crackpot and there's other scientists say well actually

we should do the work and try to figure out you know do these things exist or not and so like how do you think about some of these more controversial genes and like the pursuit of doing science around them it's a good question um genetics has evolved quite a bit over time where the models have become basically more sophisticated. And what they found is for that more common, what they call complex diseases and traits, things like, let's say, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes on the diseases side, and on the trait side, things like intelligence or muscle strength,

what they find is that they're complex in nature. What that means is that they're not driven by a single gene or a single variant. You can think of the genome as like a circuit. and basically there's a complex interaction between many dna differences in someone's genome that ultimately results in their disposition um if you think about like intelligence that the same genetic architecture is true for any complex trait even like height right it's not a single gene it's the interaction of many differences in someone's name it also leads to someone's um expressed trait or even disease risk um so over time basically scientists have started saying okay

okay, how do we kind of understand this and explore this? And then I think part of our job is to bring this information, this entirety of the scientific frontier in the hands of the people, right? So people can start understanding and making sense of where the models today, which are admittedly more modest, but how will this evolve over time, right? And I think that's a key question that as the leader of the genomic industry at this point, we have to be very judicious and thoughtful about while still giving people access to that data. How do you strike that balance? Do you give them 100% of all the information?

Or do you try to give them insights? That's a great, that's a really great question. So one thing to understand about genetics is that across different diseases and traits, there's basically a theoretical maximum that genetics can possibly predict. So intuitively, people already know this. Take something like height, for example. If you look at height, scientists basically estimate, actually before I even give you the number. You probably think, okay, height, that seems pretty genetically driven, right? Two tall parents, tall kids, usually there's some deviation, but that's the thing. Something like extroversion, less so, right? Sometimes you have really kind of more, I would say extroverted parents, but the

children are not. And again, I'm being a little bit qualitative right now. Scientists can actually map a quantitative measurements of how much the basic variation in a disease or trait can be basically explained by genetics, the theoretical maximum, right? So there's always this tension, people say nature or nurture, it's not nature or nurture, it's always nature and nurture. So height, for example, scientists estimate that 80% of the variation height can be attributed to genetics, extra versions, let's say 30%, intelligence is say 50%. So that would mean that even if you built a perfect genetic model, right, still, obviously, 50% is not attributed to genetics, right? And that's not a bugger. That's not, you know, that's just what it is, which makes perfect sense. It's

obviously a function of both the two things. So I think part of our job in our communication is expressing kind of both where the models are today and also then what is kind of remaining or what's left. So trying to think about closing that kind of gap of where the models are today and where they can be tomorrow. And to that point, I think people need to understand that even if someone is above average

in their intelligence score, that does not necessarily mean that they're above average in terms of IQ. Similarly, you can be below average and you can still actually be above average, right? Because there's still a lot of basically error in these models. It's just talking about kind of population averages.

And I don't think that's something to hide from, right? We all know that intelligence is one piece of a life. And we also know, based on what I just told you guys, that there's no such thing as kind of biologic determinism, right? No one's going to be extremely intelligent from their DNA. And so I think that's part of the, all that's part of the communication. It's complicated. And we trust that our customers can kind of understand this nuance,

understand some of this complexity. And we do our job in nicely presenting this information so people can understand all these considerations. Now, when I think of a lot of the genetics work that has been done previously, it's about understanding. It's not about taking action, right? It's very much what am I predisposed to from a disease standpoint? Where did my family come from, right? Are the stories that my grandparents told me actually true? Or is science saying something different? Is there some ability for me to begin to understand what I'm predisposed to from maybe it's intelligence or height or

whatever. But when people get information, they want usually information to take action. It's kind of great. I now understand X, what do I do with it? And so you and I have, we're very fortunate to have a bunch of crazy, insane friends who come up with all kinds of, you know, on one hand, smart ideas, on the other hand, could be potentially horrible ideas. And sometimes there's a very thin line between those two things. But as I've heard people talk about the advancements and genetics, I've heard people say, well, why don't we create a dating app where people's IQ or some sort of genetic disposition so that if you're looking for something, you can go find those people to then create babies and a life and a family, et cetera. Again, you can tell very

quickly there is this thin line between what is positive impacts of something like that and what are the negative downsides of something like that. And so I'm sure you, having spent a ton of time on this every single day. I've heard all kinds of ideas as to like, once we understand some of the genetic stuff, what do we do with it? And so where do you think the world is going to go? Is it simple things like dating apps or are there much more profound use cases for some of this information? So, yeah, there's a lot of questions there. Let me, let me unravel them a little bit. So on the disease side of the things, I think there's like four very obvious applications. The first is what I think consider kind of more extreme, but super actionable. So sometimes,

unfortunately, you see athletes suddenly drop dead. It's tragic what happens. Also, you know, my cousin suddenly died in her sleep as an example, right? Sometimes that can be actually we do something called long QT, which can be genetically linked. If you are know you're disposed of long QT, right? You may have no symptoms until later on. But if you know genetically you are, you can take something called a beta blocker, which reduces your risk 10x, right? So that's a super actionable, super clear application of genetics. Then there's another bucket for the kind of complex diseases you've always heard of, right? Things like breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, familial hypercholesterolemia, high cholesterol, right? These are all conditions where a genetic

test can save your life, where if you know you're at greater risk for breast cancer, for example, you can get earlier, more aggressive screening to catch the cancer earlier. And obviously, once you catch the cancer earlier, you can actually get rid of the cancer far more effectively. Okay, then there's a third bucket, like Alzheimer's, for example, where there's no actually explicit cure today, right? If you're an E4 carrier, or if you're based off our polygenic model your higher risk. But you already can start, I think, for me, I think what I've heard from people who are disposed, it brought a certain beauty to their life, because they appreciate so much more their day to day and how kind of fragile it is. And moreover, they already begin participating

in different sort of research studies to try to cure Alzheimer's, which I think is very powerful and informative. Then, of course, you mentioned day naps, I think, on the kind of inheritance side of things, there are still babies that are born with basically monogenic diseases. So basically both parents are carriers, and they pass it on to their offspring. I think what's going to end up happening is you're going to have basically, you know, mass whole genome sequencing, and then every single couple in the United States should know if they are both a carrier for a disease, so they can use that information to if they would like, it's obviously their liberty, it's their choice to basically have a baby without a disease, right. So I think that's

a huge, powerful application that's getting missed, where basically multiplication could could, you know, potentially stop a baby being born with a very debilitating condition. On the data side of things, I think honestly, people don't need genetics for that. Like, you know, I do think though, on the what I described where potentially will happen is, if two people are carriers, and they both choose to opt in, right, let's say you're on Tinder or something, and both

people are carriers for a condition and they both opt in, maybe potentially the algorithm does it such that those two people don't ever meet in the first place, right? And it'd be really rare. And obviously both is about individual liberties, but both parties opting in. So that point, what I'm saying right now, some might be like, oh, that's horrible, et cetera, et cetera. To me, it's all about giving the power to the customer. The customer should choose whether they want to engage and opt into that or not, right? It's not the job for Tinder or for Nucleus to say, oh, you shouldn't, shouldn't do this. It's our job to basically empower you with the scientific frontier of information, scientific frontier knowledge, and then you use that knowledge of

how you want to live healthier, happier, and potentially how you want to have a healthy family, which I think everyone has the right to, of course. What about things like food, right? I've seen a bunch of people say, hey, maybe not so much just genetics, but let's take a bunch of tests. Let's figure out your body, understand it, and then we're going to come up with a personalized diet as an example. How much does genetics or anything like that play into some of the things that maybe are more practical for people on a day-to-day basis? So sometimes your disease risk can be obviously directly shaped by what you eat. For example, if you have a high AMD risk, right?

And AMD is a later onset condition, one that takes a lot of time. You should, you know, blueberries are examples found to actually decrease your risk. So there's various cases like that where diet matters a lot. It matters a lot. And eventually we're going to be able to quantify in nucleus how much basically what you're eating, how it shapes your disease risk. In terms of exactly telling you what you should eat, those are some softer associations. generally strictly if you're talking about just the primary dna sequence um but definitely

obviously the entirety of someone's lifestyle interacts with their with their dna information and that's why if you look at nucleus we actually incorporate both someone's genetic data their whole genome data specifically with non-genetic data to come up with these overall estimates of people's um disease risks and when i go and i use the kit what is what you have you ordered it yes i did amazing not only did i order it a lot of my friends ordered it and then we all talked and we were like do we want the information like we were a little scared right because you're because also a thing where um i remember listening to peter attia and i think that he did some sort of test um with uh maybe chris hemsworth if i remember correctly i think it was alzheimer's and so in

this and they were recording a show doing this he was going and doing tons of different uh physical tests he was like swimming in the arctic ocean all kinds of crazy stuff um but you know cool and people were paying attention and in uh the filming of this they figured out that he is predisposed to uh alzheimer's yeah and so atia had to tell him and it seems to have really kind of messed with him a little bit yeah and so he said hey look i'm gonna take some time off i need to figure this out are there things that i can do today to to you know decrease the risk etc well he yeah he recommended everyone should do it correct he did yeah but but i think that you know it's one of these weird things like if you take it to the extreme right if i tell you uh when

and where you're gonna die do you want to know right tell you that if we knew that we would well you guys can't but but i just mean like if somebody could tell anybody yeah right the day that they're gonna die how they're gonna die when opposite palm because you give you information so that doesn't happen correct right so it's it's the ultimate liberties the ultimate self-agency i feel so that's the conclusion we came to was actually wait a second uh you're actually accelerating towards the bad scenario if you don't have the information exactly um but but it was funny because like there is this like maybe you're at peace because you don't know something but if you're a high agency person you actually want to know because you can take action 100 correct it

right 100 yeah it's very interesting um let's talk about the company itself you've raised quite a bit of money um you have this crazy story as to how you started the business um it sounds like you were already doing some genetic kind of like study and understanding in what i'll call the traditional you know kind of college world etc uh but then at some point you're just like all right screw it i got it from here guys uh you dropped out and like basically did self-study oh yeah well so my my interest in genetics goes way back as i mentioned so let's just take a step back i think understanding this story goes back to the beginning um i'm a first generation american both my parents are from iran they escaped during this time revolution came to america i like to say that you know we

have the kind of first generations have the immigrant drive and that hunger with the opportunity of america right it's a beautiful combination um and then i mentioned my cousin who kind of suddenly you know passed away in her sleep and at the time i kept asking my parents you know how does this happen how does this happen i was eight i didn't understand they kept saying oh bad genetics bad genetics. What does that even mean? I didn't know. Eventually, I started studying genetics. And what I realized was that disease isn't really necessarily kind of an inherent property of someone, right? Maybe you could actually kind of correct a, you know, mutation or a variant in DNA difference that actually causes a disease. Could you cure a disease? So in high school,

I joined a duties of gene laboratory. It was actually in Brooklyn, kind of second floor of a warehouse, right? Where, you know, in this closet, effectively, we engineered yeast, make them illuminate, we edited bacteria to make them resistant antibiotics. And I love this kind of beauty of biology. And I started thinking about what if you combine this kind of depth and beauty with something that's a little bit more iterable, because one thing about the wet lab is that the life cycles could be so long, right? You make a mistake, it's like, forget about it's another week on the computer, you made a mistake, you just need to click delete button. So I went to Penn where I studied a computational biology for a year and a half. And at Penn, I remember I was

in bio 221, which is genetics class. And the chairman of the biology department basically brought up this beautiful chart of the decreasing cost of whole genome sequencing. Okay. And when you look at this chart, you know, you can look it up and look it up. It basically says that whole genome sequencing was around a billion dollars in 2000, right? Sequencing single genome was $1 billion. And then at the time it became a thousand dollars. So it's an exponential decrease on a logarithmic scale, right? It beats out Moore's law. And I thought to myself, wow, this price is going to go to zero. Then what? What's going to happen? Right? So I kind of told this to my friend and he was like, is this going to be on the midterm? I was like, he's got to visit the

point there, right? So I was like, you know what? I kind of want to analyze my own whole genome data, right this is what i really want to do and then i became kind of obsessive i couldn't get this out of my mind and also combine that with i found college to be very stifling right very limited you know kind of this like uh just felt just felt i think suffering is a great word just felt so limiting like i wanted to become free almost right i want to express express my kind of deep deeper inner soul right i told i said the there's the joseph camber quote have the inner being match the physical plane that's what i wanted um so i left i left moved back into my bedroom covid's going on. So I'm in my bedroom in Brooklyn. And basically, this begins a year long, like

intellectual journey, where I filled in 18 subject notebooks on statistics, on genetics, and some programming things to figure out, okay, how do I actually answer this question? How do I actually analyze my whole genome data? And the way I like to think about is like, basically, during that year, I built myself up to kind of an intellectual frontier. And it's almost similar to being in a plane and looking down, you first see like a sea of green when you look at a forest. But as you get down and down and down it starts to become more granular and you start seeing basically huge holes in the forest and then you go you know how's no one here so then you go and you say wait a second i'm gonna start planting my seeds and you start planting your seeds start planting your seeds

and suddenly you start uh what i think of as productizing intellectual alpha right you have this intellectual alpha you have this frontier knowledge then you start taking that knowledge and basically creating a product and that's what nucleus is and that's why it's the deepest expression of my soul um so in doing that eventually you know uh you know my parents course were immigrants they weren't you know too happy that you know what are you doing in your bedroom all day uh thankfully uh we we managed to i i texted eventually at some point a year later i i texted cold um an angel investor corey levy from z fellas highly recommend by the way if any early stage founder um is getting the journey started highly recommend z fellows

um i texted corey and then you know a couple weeks later you know god bless he gave a hundred thousand dollars so that was kind of the journey that was the beginning of it and when he gave you you the hundred thousand dollars it was just you yeah it was just me and what was the plan the plan was to build the next google no um at that point what happened was we ended up raising around three hundred thousand dollars from cory ed and a bunch of others um and i went and i basically recruited a you know what the person who became the cto as well as the head of operations uh coo um and then we started basically creating a mock-up and in parallel to that i was also emailing this um scientist um who became our chief scientific officer i was asking him kind of very

technical questions under actually a student and funnily enough um because i figured i'll do all the science you know i just need you know once you come to the frontier of knowledge you know well who knows you know the frontier of knowledge what other scientists do right so i was basically able to speak to other scientists ask them very technical questions and then eventually i think we realized that we had the kind of same vision right because um there was a one of the first papers i ever read when i was in the bedroom was a paper on this kind of ddc um polygenic score site um and so the creator of that we actually ended up acquiring that software that i read about years ago around you know whatever a year later and then he the creator of that actually

ended up coming out as our cso so there's a you know complex you know kind of web of people but it all started with that first you know 300k approximately um and at that point you know there's this funny video of of me kind of bursting out of my home with this like little nest camera like burst into this home screaming when the first 100k basically came in right when they said we'll invest because it was so much pent up fanaticism love energy you know so and today you guys operate uh in person or remote well we're predominantly in person i'm trying to move everything to in person predominantly in person yeah and how do you operate the company like it's unique in that you're trying to build what some would look at as a tech company some would look at as a science

kind of lab and research and, and, you know, kind of non tech in that way. So how do you operate on day to day basis? That's a great question. nucleus is complex. Because I like to joke that, you know, half of us have a PhD, half of us are under 25. But if you think about nucleus, there's multiple components. One is like kind of statistical genetics and bioinformatics. And there's like classical software engineering, full stack development systems architecture, yet another is like clinical operations right um part of clinical operations is like actually building a genetic testing infrastructure right genetic testing infrastructure itself has multiple components requires multi-different expertise there's a regulatory component um there's a kind

of more classical operations component just like you know operating like customer service etc then there's design right actual product design ui ux there's communications communications is very huge as i alluded to earlier right our product is communications right we give people information, that's communications. And I can go on. But as you can see already, there's such a diversity of skill sets and backgrounds required to operate a company like Nucleus. So it really requires, I think, someone who and I'm fortunate that, you know, I spent so much time kind of building what I think of as the intellectual castle. So once you build the intellectual castle, what new employees may not fully appreciate, which is okay, because employees should abstract

things away is they're walking around your castle. So I like to say when a new employee is onboarded, there's actually 10,000 assumptions that have gone into what the ask is, right? There's 10,000 things they actually don't know what was assumed before I say, hey, go do this thing. I like to say, like, if you're in a castle, go back to the castle analogy. You know, if someone's like fixing a window, right? They're not thinking about the plumbing, not thinking about the lights, not thinking about the floor, not thinking about the foundation of the castle, right? They're not thinking about who comes and cleans the castle every week. They're just focused on their specific task, right? So I think as a founder,

you have this kind of intimacy where you understand and appreciate what the person's job is and then how it fits into the broader picture right and that requires i think um quite a unique skill set of being both very investigative right but also enterprising i think often someone's one or the other to be both is extremely powerful especially for building a frontier tech company like like nucleus genomics now what is like the long-term vision obviously you don't want to just do kind of the genetic readings, there's a whole bunch of things you could do. Like, how do you think about the idea maze

of where this goes? I think you have to build a consumer-centric, real-time, quantified health platform. So ideally, eventually the platform goes, you know, hey, Kian, as a 24-year-old in Brooklyn, wow, you had super high LDL levels in your last blood test. We found people, wait a second,

that's actually not a surprise because we found people with similar, who are in the 90th percentile, like you, in their genetic disposition for familial hyperglycemia, of course you're going to have a high blood pressure call. actually high blood cholesterol, so high LDL levels. So then it says, well, maybe if you actually want,

we found people similar to you, if they go on their Peloton three times a week for the next four weeks, they see a 10% reduction in their LDL levels. And by the way, when you go to Amazon, i.e. Whole Foods, you probably shouldn't buy that white rice and that ribeye steak. In other words, the actual integration

of this entirety of this data. And then part of this too is leveraging AI. People always say AI, AI, AI these days. AI is a tool, right? it's a tool and that tool i think will be most consequential in the application of genomics if you look at the founder of nvidia jensen he actually talks a lot about this a lot he says it's actually not the b2b software tool it's actually in genetics where genetics and biology more broadly where ai will be most consequential and i think part of that is alluding to what i

said earlier which is if you look at any disease or traits there's sort of this like missing gap between how much genetics theoretically explain and how much they currently explain i think closing that gap is obviously one of the grand missions of nucleus to basically perfectly predict us to the theoretical maximum from a primary DNA sequence. It's interesting that we need artificial intelligence to understand the machine that has created intelligence, right? Like to a degree, you know more about your car than you do your body. And so in order for us to better understand ourselves and the quote unquote, you know, superior intelligent, you know, being, we need artificial intelligence to get it get there yeah i think um genomics you know the dna is very

complicated circuit and i i think i suspect that what's going to end up happening is it's going to be more of a black box model that hopefully becomes more and more interpretable over time but initially probably a more black box model that can already start making predictions that go beyond actual kind of causal mechanism explanations right and to put that a little bit simpler it's like i can make a prediction about something without necessarily understanding how it shapes that thing right um and that this can be very true in genetics too where you have like an association but you don't necessarily understand how that dna variant actually shapes the disease or training question but you do understand it's associated um and i think that's

something really fundamental to think about in statistics and with ai which is that you can have prediction without explanation now as you think through again understanding and now this evolution to action there are don't eat this you should eat this kind of external inputs to their impact on genetics what about just changing the genetics themselves right so obviously crispr we've seen a lot of talk around um steroids or peptides or you know many of these things and some of them don't actually impact directly the genetics or kind of dna sequencing um but there are quite a bit of conversations right now about do we have the technology and will it be ethically uh kind of approved to actually begin to edit what our genetics you know kind of are uh are initially

yeah before you can edit anything you have to actually understand uh like causality you have to understand like mechanism um so we're still ways off from understanding sort of the complex architecture of some of these diseases and traits right as i said it's a complex interaction of many different dna differences in someone's genome um so that's the first step is actually understanding more and more, which is to say, how did these different DNA variants actually save someone's trade? Then the second part of that is to theoretically, at least do kind of if you were actually going to employ genetic engineering, I think it's genetic engineering is a very powerful technology, very powerful technology, I don't think it's discussed enough. I think we need a

lot more conversations as a society to think about, hey, this technology is coming, this technology is improving, how can we appropriately integrate into society, right? It's not something to i it's kind of similar to the information thing i think we believe that you know oppressing technology hiding technology hiding information it just splinters society right i think sunlight is the best disinfectant and we should bring technology and empower and educate people so they understand its implications and to that point um if you were going to actually employ some of this technology due to the nature of of the architecture some of these diseases and traits you'd have to do something called multiplex engineering which is basically have to engineer

multiple sites in the genome, which is actually very difficult already, it's hard, people are trying to have no off target effects, where that means basically, if I intend to change, you know, DNA letter, I actually change a different one, that's obviously really bad. And then there's another implication, which is that, you know, genetics, and nature, it's all a balance. And what I mean by that is that, like, you know, if you can optimize, say, if you could actually engineer for for something like intelligence, right, someone might say that, what you find is that, you know, in these different intelligence variants are actually associated with different potentially neuropsychiatric diseases, or even, you know, like autism, right? So I think we have

to be very deliberate and understand that there's not like a kind of panacea solution here for genetic engineering. Nature is all about balance. And there's something fundamental to that, that I think, as humanity is going to start appreciating more and more as we come across these questions of genetics in society. Now, if you guys are successful, how does the world look differently in the future? I think a couple things. Every time baby's born, their DNA is sequenced. And basically, ideally, you kind of track the entirety of all their different molecular data in real time, the second, you know, the baby's born, right? So I always think that the vision for a company like Nucleus is to basically, there's two kind of main parts. One is on the kind of,

I think, inheritance part, one is kind of human health part. So that's part of the human health part. I think you have to basically look for all possible molecular signals prior to there's any obvious phenotypic signal to flag before the onset of disease. In other words, what I'm saying is that diseases, diseases, there's always actually some, you can see this with a lot of different people in the quantified health, if you really start quantifying your health, you find that there's always some molecular anomalies prior to you know you get a cough prior to you know you start feeling not good or prior to there's some like obvious phenotypic like signal that something's wrong if you can actually flag those molecularly that is the ultimate disease prevention right

uh i actually think there's very small examples of this already let me give you an example eight sleep mateo's friend of both of ours um if you look at eight sleep i've been eight sleep um one time i went to sleep on the mattress and you know i woke up the next day and said your heart rate was up 50%. Her body's up 50%. That must be a bug, must be a mistake. I feel perfectly fine, right? I do the kind of, you know, check. Everyone does this kind of mushy qualitative check when you wake up. Oh, I feel fine, whatever. And then around 24 hours later, you know, I think this was a while ago. Was it COVID? Whatever. It was some sickness. I had some sickness. And I was like, you know, basically knocked out. And I remember thinking to myself, huh, that's interesting. Actually,

in a way, the AIDS tip kind of flagged even before I knew. And then if you take that to the extreme, imagine tracking and also talking about AI, if you're tracking all these different molecular signals at one time in real time, as a consumer health platform, that's probably the most powerful health technology that could ever exist, right? It's actually the ultimate integration of all this data on a single layer. And there's probably gonna be an AI that actually sits on top and tracks everything you eat, everything you do, every time you work out, right? Constantly adjusting and updating its estimates of your risk for conditions, right? It's almost like this like super health i don't know like it has this health omniscience that like sits inside of you that

tracks everything right that's on the human health side on the um inheritance side i think a couple things one is i think you know people still don't understand as i mentioned earlier that the power of carrier screening every person who gets sequenced because once you get sequenced this is one of the reasons is you can identify if someone's a carrier for a condition if mom and dad are both carriers then obviously there's a lot of implication for the offspring you have to be very judicious and careful, because you don't want your son or daughter necessarily be born with the disease. So given that, I think one of the first things that's going to happen is you'll basically see the elimination of sort of kind of monogenetic diseases. I think monogenetic diseases, like if

parents both want, they have the liberty to say, actually, wait, you know, I don't necessarily want my son or daughter to be born with this disease. And it's literally just upon its square, like everyone lives in eighth grade, right? It's, you know, multiplication. So that's another thing. And I also think there's going to be eventually probably very, very much long term, but the kind of integrated genetic stack, from, you know, sequencing, analyzing to what you alluded to earlier editing, where I think genetic engineering technology very powerful, we have to be very judicious. Obviously, as I said, nature's balance, right?

Nature's this delicate balance, you have to be careful. But I do for the do think that the kind of genetic stack is going to get built, right from the kind of theoretical to the practical. I think that's going to, that's going to, you know, obviously be, I mean, literally, it's literally going to change society and how we how we how we i mean who we are i think we have to be careful again i i want to i want to you know really stress that which is that when you start having these conversations today it's not for me it's not for nucleus to make these decisions on behalf of society we are part of

society right we understand as being the kind of leading genomic startup there's a lot of responsibility and we want to be very much bringing constituents and parties now before the technology is obviously fully baked and start talking today about the implications because they shouldn't just be something that's like you know you bring out you know 30 years and hey by the way we can do this right it's not the job for the academics or scientists just to have and kind of you know cover up it's our job to give this information and this power to the people now there's gonna be a lot of people who watch this listen to this and they're like these two guys are full of shit what are they talking about there's no way that we're gonna be able to scientifically do this or it is

dangerous to go do this. What do you think the real risks are, if any? And how do you think about mitigating risk as you build the business? Well, I mean, there's a lot of risks. I mean, as I mentioned, one is we don't currently understand the architecture of these conditions. So there's a lot of unintended consequences, unknown unknowns, right? Even if someone wanted to do multiplex engineering, the technology is not there, you might end up, you know, engineering, you know, different parts of the DNA unintended, people might get diseased, they might die, right? That's obviously not what we want. It might be the case that if you actually do optimize for something like intelligence, what might end up happening is you optimize for a

disease, right? So there's a lot of unintended consequences. I also think there's always that question of humanity taking control over your kind of own genome, right? In some way, you can make the argument that different innovative technologies has been always taking more agency over our bodies. But there's something very primary about DNA that we have to be, I think, very thoughtful about and i and i really want to stress that like in this podcast this conversation it's an opportunity for people to start engaging i don't see these things being spoken enough about right i think like things go through the hype cycles right genetics never had its hype cycle which is good for us right it's alpha for us right but on the other hand i do think it's important

people start really thinking seriously in the same way they actually think about like general artificial intelligence thinking seriously about genetic engineering thinking seriously about this kind of genetic stack and saying you know what what you know how are we as a society going to start kind of integrating this technology right that's really important and it's not being spoken about enough i think when you say that there hasn't been a hype cycle yet and it's a positive that's a great thing do you anticipate that there will be a hype cycle in the future or actually the ideal condition is that the industry avoids all hype cycles and kind of continues to grind upwards i don't really know it doesn't really matter to me we're gonna win it can be a hype cycle

not a hype cycle i don't know i feel like we well hype cycles they bring capital they bring talent they bring attention right they bring noise as well and so there's positives and negatives to it obviously ai crypto right we've seen some of these over the last couple of years um and so i think some companies say look when the hype cycle comes i take the positives and try to avoid negatives uh other people get smacked by the negative right they completely you know business blows up or whatever um and so it's an interesting way to think through like if you haven't had a a hype cycle in your sector um whether you actually want one or not i mean we're just building right like we some of these things i think about if anything i think about in the

context of like it's almost a good distraction there's other hype cycles right like i think people are building like commodities wrappers over you know llms you know let let them do that like we're building what i think will be one of the most consequential companies ever right let us keep doing that um money you know the hype cycle can come it cannot come i've been doing this you know forgot hype i mean i've been doing this you know hour 11 you know you know sick in my bedroom you know 11 p.m you know on notebook page you know whatever 249 talk about lack of hype cycle in other words i'm saying is like there's a level of kind of focus that we have that can come cannot come we're locked in um so yeah where do you think that comes from

like why are you so focused i think it comes from uh i think it comes from both a love and fear i think there's definitely a love i mean to me like the intersection of kind of science and product and alchemy of creating something from nothing it's it's so so beautiful it's the most beautiful thing i said it's an expression of my soul right i love that also because i think a little bit from fear and that definitely you know i'm a first generation american as i said right there's nothing an expectation right i as i i think i said this in alex's podcast too which is like that you know when you're in your bedroom it's it's as many people you don't want to disappoint right um your parents came here they made a lot of sacrifices right you you you don't

go to you know a school like penn and then leave it you know because i'm gonna you know follow my dreams? What does that even mean? You don't do that. Right? It's like against the culture. You don't do that. Simply don't disappoint yourself. Right? Because there's, there's always of course, always. There's always doubt, especially in the bed in the bedroom. There's doubt, can I do this? Can one person do this? Right? And that doubt is fear. But I do think there's both in that push and that pull. There's that love and

that fear, right? There's, there's that fear, like, I don't want to, you know, like, I'm scared for, you know, out of my mind but also then and that put that you know pushes you that motivates you but this is the love of what you're doing so the combination of both is intense unwavering focus so how does that feed into who you recruit to come work at the company i mean people need to be i think i think people people need to be absolutely focused i mean there's no doubt about that i think we have a very um diverse eclectic mix of people at nucleus i think that's when it's just like underappreciated to people from all across the political spectrum, people with a variety of different kind of

ideologies, etc. And I think part of that is actually beautiful, because I almost wanted to kind of, you know, in a way emulate society, right? I almost want, you know, there's that kind of Steve Jobs analogy with the rocks hitting each other, the rocks hitting each other, and then all of a sudden, they both come out polished. I really believe in that fundamentally. And that's why I think these conversations are so important. Because we can talk publicly about these things, some people might love it some people might hate it but they're definitely talking about it and that's very important to me which is bringing this and giving this information this knowledge to people i think internally people need to have that intense focus but i don't necessarily expect

people to agree with me either but i think that will make us all better that make the product better that would make us even more judicious and thoughtful while still accelerating and then my last question is around like regulation yeah or um maybe i'll just call it uh the rules and the rules are both um we've talked a little bit about maybe kind of like society's uh uh perspective on like what's inbounds and what's out of bounds even if it isn't necessarily backed by science right it's just kind of like uh the public thinks something what are the regulatory kind of considerations for something like this i'm assuming that there are multiple regulatory bodies that you all interact with on a daily basis um what are they trying to accomplish do

feel like those rules are good bad they need to be improved like just talk talk about that kind of apparatus yeah nucleus is fully we follow all regulations and we always follow regulations it's definitely evolving space intense regulations um and we're excited to work with all the regulatory bodies to you know continue to make sure we're kind of fully compliant um i definitely think that people have the right to their whole genome data people have the right to know basically what's going on inside their body um and i think part of nucleus's mission and part of i think the government's mission is to make sure that we can give people life-saving insights right if a piece of information can save someone's life with a swab a single swab can read your entire genome finally

and you know what what one one piece of communication can save your life that to me sounds like something that everyone should have access to in a manner that's you know sure are regulated. That's also, I think, HIPAA compliant. We're also clear and CAPA accredited as well. So there's a way of doing that kind of responsibly, but still making sure that people have access. It's really important to me. And I think nucleus embodiment, that's true today. So I'm happy about that. Is there anything that surprised you so far in building the company? Oh my God. Everything. I mean, this is the classic answer. I can give you a non-classic answer, but the classic answer is it's so hard. I mean, everyone

says it's so hard. It's so hard. So what does actually mean? It's just, it's just like, I think there's a Paul Graham quote, where he says, you know, one thing about when you when you leave college, if you leave college, you start a company and works or it starts working, you know, it's like you start running as fast as you as fast and as hard as you a human being can run at age like 2022. And I think reading that at when you're 15, you're like, I don't know what that means. That sounds

kind of fun. But then you live it. And basically, the idea is you see it becomes like all consuming, it's just all consuming it just takes over everything you have every being every part like every spirit soul whatever everything goes into the company and i think that kind of process is beautiful it also definitely takes a certain kind of personality entrepreneurship is not for everyone it is not for everyone it is you gotta you gotta be willing to you know quote unquote die in the court i think what is the percentage confidence you would put right now on the company succeeding i mean you know it's funny because it's almost like always trick questions sometimes vcs ask me

this and i'm like but they don't understand like either company succeeds or like i die it's like if i throw my head into the wall to make it succeed it's gonna succeed it's almost like i i read i read this thing recently i think dorkish posted this it was basically said like if you do everything you will win if you do everything like everything and i think the linden johnson is example and johnson's you know complicated person but um in terms of like persistence and just doing absolutely everything sometimes i think to myself you know oh it's interesting like lyndon johnson's interesting because you know if you read caro's biography there's this like level of intensity and like insanity and like pathological likeness to his to his work but he

literally did everything he literally did everything like a human being could do and then he became president so you have to wonder like who becomes president well maybe the person that does everything right in the same way like if you went to him and said what's your confidence he's going to succeed, he'll probably be like 100%. And again, I think you have to learn from these stories

and that he did a lot of things that he honestly shouldn't have done that was a little bit ethically fraught, right? So I think doing everything is not an excuse for that. I do think though that there is something to this idea that's like,

if you do everything, everything that you can in your capacity, if you give something your all, it has to be inevitability. You bend nature to your will. So let's just say 99%. All right. We'll keep track and we'll do this again in the future.

Okay. That's great. Thank you so much for having me.