Re: [DIYbio] Is this mini initiative dead ?

On 1/22/24 04:39, Aaron Berger wrote:
> The solution I envision is that when one seeks funding or support for a DIY project she should sell the DIYBIO ethos itself. This
> endeavor can lead to a more considered perspective on one's own work (and then someone might try to monetize your idea).

I think Aaron is onto a big thing here, and I have "a little" to add. Selling is very necessary for any product -- it is wishful
thinking if you skip it. So then once you acknowledge a need for salesmanship/saleswomanship, comes the want for more team
members (to find more salespeople and tech support and accounting support also).

But is the VC club the only source of investment money and the only terms one can expect? In the low risk, low tech world of real
estate, there are plenty of mechanisms for getting money for projects and they don't even always sell ownership in a startup,
sometimes just loan interest. For example, a shopping center development company is all about construction management, and they
ask around for projects, and some of the projects are parcels of land held for 5 years or so by an investment group, a partnership
usually, so this case uses ownership to extract a return on capital used to purchase land and once the development company
completes the project it is sold retail and the land owners, (more like wholesalers), get paid and get their return. They only
get paid once the retail sale of a shopping center is ripe -- with shoppers ready to shop and traffic passing by the location up
to levels that support enough shoppers to pay the retail rents.

So, the real estate analogy to a bio startup... Where's that? It will take a little selling to put it in the mind's eye of an
investor, and you need to be an investor yourself. Think of what parts of your plan are very low risk and sell those. If there
are no low risk parts, your plan is toast, DOA, silly. The real estate analogs are the office you work in, the lab you build and
test in, and your track record of staying alive in business and paying your taxes.

The VC know that some parts of many plans are low risk after a substantial wait, and they decide to risk some accordingly, with
the knowledge that liquidating will recover some of the original investment and one success in ten will pay for all the rest. The
real estate type of investor won't suffer the VC level of risk even -- they demand that company liquidation returns more than the
investment during the life of the demographics waiting period before the building developer is involved and during project
development.

The part where you be the investor is analogous to the demographics waiting period before project development. You build a team
working on something very low risk and get them ready to keep the risk low during the ultimate project you envision. This may
seem hard to face -- that you cannot leap into what inspires you, but first have to build a functioning team, and your works is
something less exciting for a while and you have to *SELL* this less exciting concept. If that's unimaginable to you, the VC are
all that's left for your funding.

How would we sell the idea of a low risk, "training wheels" project, and to whom? Well, for example, I did a project with less
than necessary capital to arrive at a half-baked result, an electroporator with no plastic case, not ready for prime time since no
safety testing done yet, (since no protective case with safety interlocks against high voltage dangers), so incomplete and not a
speed up tool. The capital I could have had easily is the getting ready kind -- just finding some grunt work to pay the bills and
getting a survivor track record created. Then I could have shown my product ideas to real estate types of investors and they
would have few objections.

It's not easy to find grunt work to do to prove you can be in business, but it's not easy to make a home lab and many of us have
done that and can imagine a little more prep work before getting into the exciting phases of creation.

Speed is a very important thing. I was just about ready to get some techie grunt work, but lost my lab. My lab was in a house in
Austin TX as things started to get very expensive there -- like NYC or SF or LA, and the house needed to be sold. That reset the
timeline. Another thing is I got older -- some phases come ready or not.

So now I have a building block controller that can be the button pushing, user programmable in python, small readout displaying,
sequence generating, measuring, power converting guts to most any lab instrument of solar charger/converter/battery-manager.
Know anyone needing these kinds of guts for a project that are OSHW and some help using them? I'm for hire.


--
John Griessen in Albuquerque NM building lab gear for biologists

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