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Ventures from the Valley brings you inside the rooms where billion-dollar decisions get made. Hosted by R136 Ventures, each episode features candid conversations with the founders, operators, and investors shaping the future of technology; from AI infrastructure to global fintech to the companies redefining how we build.
My name is Victorski and we are here running a podcast ventures from the valley. We have an exciting guest today Omry Amir Dory who is general partner and head of NFX buyer. He leads precede and seed stage investments in one of the legendary funds that pioneered consumer uh uh consumer internet investments and keep going u in that direction but also doing a lot of other stuff. So thanks for joining. Um great to be here. Uh maybe you can tell a little bit about yeah yourself and your your story line. Great. So my name is I'm one of the five general partners at NFX. We manage 1.4 billion. Sweet spot is $2 to5 million lead checks at SID. We invest in everything but my focus is intersection of biology and technology and longevity. [snorts] Actually my goal in life, my mission in life is to end involuntary death and to have fun along the way otherwise why bother and um yeah my background is starting academia doing some hardcore biochemistry PhD back in Israel then came to Stanford on a full fellowship did my postto in the medical school after four years me and a couple of friends from Intel back in Israel started a company building software for bio engineers we got uh since check also from NFX. That's how I met them initially and then um ran the company for 5 and a half years. We got acquired by Twist Biosciences, a leading company making DNA or synthesizing DNA. I was head of COD dev there for two and a half years until they just before they IPOed and then you know the IPO became a $10 billion company for a while. I left to start my own fund a $10 million preceded fund called Tech Bio. And after two years NFX as I said invested my company but also [snorts] helped me start the fund invested my fund told me that it was a test and I passed it so I should join them. So I joined them as a venture part of fund two and general partner for fund three onward currently on fund four and uh from the very start you were doing biotech right. So it was like you the first one to basically build the bay uh tech uh direction uh investment in in NFX is is that right? Yeah. So or they were investing in biotech before uh like real. Yeah. So they I introduced them to Mu Power Sciences um which was a fund one investment before I came but I introduced them to the team and helped them kind of with the company and I'm still involved with that company and then uh they had some adjacent bio but uh I joined to do the kind of hardcore what I call tech bio. It's like biotech turning more into technology than biology. So technology first in biotech. Okay. So uh maybe um let's speak a little bit of NFX and obviously I read like every every newsletter and watch every video for like probably last uh 7 8 years. Uh so uh and I'm inspired by everything you guys doing. Uh could you just give like a little bit of insight how like NFX is structured? Uh so you said there are five uh partners. So you're one of five general partners. How big is the team? uh what is the responsibility split uh how the decisions are being made? Maybe a little bit of like unpacking of NFX uh for our listeners. Yeah. Well, mostly founders. Sure. You know, at NFX we're around 50 people all in all. Uh we have well we have five general partners, two partners and associate and principles for sure. We have a small office in Israel led by my partner Giggy Levy Weiss and my partner Sarah Bonfield. They are kind of very much known in Israel. So they invest in you [snorts] know Gigi is kind of the king of Israel like kind of jokingly said. So he invests in everything out of Israel. He's an expert in gaming and other things. And then um the rest of the team is in the valley with the main office San Francisco. It's a cool office you could come visit. We even have like a small speak easy bar and a dance floor which we use sometimes. I've been I've been there. I've been there. Yeah, it's nice and small. I live I live in Yeah, I live in Mel Park. So, and a small office in Palo Alto where I am right now. So, two partners. I'm in Mel Park. My partner James is a kind of network effect marketplace guru here in Palo Alto. And then my partner Morgan Beller and Pete Flint in San Francisco. She came from address from and for Meta where she was leading the crypto effort and she's leading kind of crypto and space and deep tech investment. and Pete Flint started the TRIA that was sold to to Zillow and another huge company. So he's a kind of prop tech fintech AI everything guy. So I think it start with the partners like we it's an equal partnership like we like and respect each other and got each other back. We have one IC for everything including bio. Usually in our investment committee we start with bio and we have Emil [snorts] Lru the CEO of Twist as a venture partner in our fund. So she's she's been a huge help for us. [snorts] How how big is the investment commission? Well officially or unofficially. So unofficially well unofficial unofficially you know we have a large investment committee where every Monday you know the entire investment team plus our chief legal and our COO and our CFO and some other people join so everybody knows what's going on and everybody kind of present their companies [snorts] companies come to present to us as a partnership etc. uh voting members are the GPS but again I think to get the best companies it can never be a consensus. I think the best you know the the only game in early stage VC is to find those unique companies the power companies where it's like a 100x returner and those companies are unique and always polarizing. What we are looking for is not the lack of weakness but excellent and you know we are looking for somebody to really be excited and you know kind of like I want to do it no matter what. [clears throat] We listen to each other obviously mainly I see it where I I don't want to bring companies that don't have conviction to to the investment meeting and then if I present the company and I lose conviction along the way based on the feedback etc it's a big tell for me and if I just okay I heard you I understand the downside the upside but I still totally want to do it this is why [snorts] I don't remember we ever vetoed each other on a deal if we had a really really strong conviction but you respect listen to your partners if they tell you okay this partner and this founder looks good but it's not it's not compelling enough for fundraising they know that they've they seen so many founders so I like I listen to them and they listen to me you must have really a lot of inbound uh uh inbound uh flow startups right probably hundreds if not thousands a week right and uh uh you have to distinguish between those you will have a deep dive into or the one which you like pass upon. So how much for you does uh the like uh warm referrals mean and uh are you seriously looking into like cold inbound uh uh activities? Uh do you have like any like process for that? Do you do you often invest into like uh cold inbound? So somebody's like knocking your door and you are excited to invest or like most of your deals are still like work connection somebody has to very good question you're touching two of the most important things in the VC which is sourcing and selecting and winning deals right so for sourcing you you said you read everything we write and thank you for that you know we we're trying not to just make AI slop we are actually founders and we write about things that we know and believe in and think about and We not hesitate to to put some spicy material. I wrote a whole essay about why investors become [ __ ] that painted a big target on my back. But like I wanted to I wanted to to be a reminder for me not to be negative and to my founders like if I ever like behave like that, please send me the the presentation. Please send me the blog post and tell me where exactly so I can so I can improve. Um you mentioned kind of deal flow and selection, right? Yeah. So at NFX we we're trying to be like a startup. We have a software and software team internally and we build tools to help us manage the deal flow. The one thing you don't want to be again it's all come back to the power of early stage investing where most startups will not return the money and very few return everything. You don't want to create a machine that bias you towards the worst deals. Right? So if you build something that makes it too slow and too cumbersome to kind of see the signal to noise, then you optimize for getting the worst deals. You know, the best deals are hot. The best deals have the best referrals. The best deals, you know, you won't wait for you, right? You need to be proactive. I also want to differentiate between playing on defense and playing on offense. Playing on defense is like, oh, I'm getting a bunch of deal flow. Being on offense is like thinking writing be genuinely authentically into a space like I'm very genuinely into longevity [snorts] and then have a thesis around like what are we looking for write about it search it for me it's even like reading papers scientific papers and being on offense like I want this then your mind mind is ready uh when the right startup arrive or you start it yourself right so we prefer to be on offense more than defense But we also build a bunch of uh tools internally to help us you know take care of all the deal flow. We get a lot of deal flow especially when we run our fast programs which is very quick money in the bank kind of programs. We can get thousands of deals a week and we need to go through them very quickly. So we build a tool like C3 where it's a [snorts] AI tool that go through kind of all the information we have in our internal CRM of the company and give it a score and we optimize this after many many rounds and uh things that are high score we try to see as quickly quickly as possible and look [clears throat] is it is it is it is it is it an autopilot or a copilot I mean this C3 is does it like do work for yourself for for yourself or it just helps you to like uh find out the signal in all this noise. First of all, start with the fact that my partners really like Star Wars. So everything internal some Star Wars. So we have X-wing and we have the Force and we have Jedi and we have like a bunch of kind of internal code names for stuff. So we have this suit of software we build internally called the force and that's where we live. It's kind of CRM. We auto every zoom call we do we auto procribe and put in CRM every documents every interaction every email goes there and then we have tools like chat and effects where you can ask like question based on all our internal [clears throat]
we have a lot of tools that help us automate the process and make us more efficient. Uh but in the end look you talked about referral referral is an important signal to noise. This game is all about signal to noise, right? You know, and I use the kind if you look I the way I tell it to founders, it's kind of cascading. Like if uh one of my founders tell me, "Wow, this is the best technology I ever seen." Like you have to see it. Like I'll definitely take the meeting as soon as possible. If another investor that invested in the same round tell me, "Wow, I think this is amazing. I'm putting my money here. Um, do you want to join me in this round? I think you are a good fit for that. I'll definitely take a look. Um, we even take a look at cold emails. So, you should get like the warmest introduction possible. Like it's a known signal to noise social hacking kind of thing. So, as a good founder, that should be part of your superpowers. The worst worst thing you can do, the worst especially early stage is to use somebody like a banker or somebody who take a fee for introduction to investors. They aren't the worst. Like it's such a negative signal like we will not invest in you if you do that. Like seriously like good founders should be able to found fortunately uh founders fortunately founders early stage founders don't have enough cash to support this sort of uh uh this sort of you'll be surprised you'd be surprised shyers out there that says hey you know I'll introduce you to a bunch of investor I want 5% of the deal and if you're a first- time entrepreneur and you have no money and you don't know anything better you might take the deal it's saying like ah if he gets me money great if not like You know it's if he does 5% if he doesn't like it's a new investor but they don't know how negative signal it is you know and like look we spent yeah it ends up spend a lot of efforts to market themselves to write to be out there you know we are very very reachable like if you cannot find somebody in our network that can introduce you to us we actually built a tool for that we build a tool called signal that [snorts] does exactly that you can go with your email it looks at the metadata of your email it's a huge use of investors and you can see who in your network is the best introduction to that investor. We [snorts] build a tool for that use. By the way, do you like if you like uh uh have certain conviction uh for startup uh but uh uh if you still uh passing on that uh do you help these founders to find a good fit because you have like a broad network of coin investors right? I mean is it like something what you do like helping a good founder even this is not the best fit for NFX to to to find an investor or it's not your kind of motive? I don't know it's it's very hard right you know I'm involved in so many companies on the board of so many companies especially in bio the last two years have been difficult and I spend most of my time doing follow-up investing so my allegiance is for my companies first and then finding the best companies possible like if we decide not to invest in somebody it's also not a great signal for me to send to somebody else like if we if we liked it enough we would invest so I don't think the founder wants my intro to those people. I'm happy to share this way. We build signal. I'm happy to share kind of the network of all investors. That's why we big signal which is an external tool everybody can use. We build it for founders to help fund investors. Um [snorts] yeah, that's a kind of the quick answer. Okay, sounds good. So, let's go a go on uh how many companies do you have in your portfolio? Uh and how many do you add like on annual basis? As a fund itself, we have hundreds. Now, a fund our size would usually do A rounds or B rounds. So, you know, the traditional VC funds will make anywhere between 15 to 20 deals. And usually each partner does one deal per year per fund or something like that. We are very different. Uh maybe we're crazy, but we like the early stage. All my partners have been themselves or people of like 10 billion dollar companies and you know know how to build company and love the early stage. So we love the seed [snorts] stage. Our sweet spot is $2 to5 million and we leave a lot of the fund for follow-up pay checks. That means that we're in a lot of companies and it's a lot of work because we another thing we do is we lead we don't follow. One [snorts] of my pet peeves with investors is like you have one job to make your mind to get conviction and invest and even this one job most investor will give to somebody else and just follow based on somebody else conviction which is a valid thing to do you know don't get me wrong but I just I don't have huge amount of respect for that if you can lead lead you know have conviction like believe in something like you don't have to have somebody else tell you it's good but because we do lead we do start boards We sit in boards. It's mean that we work a lot. So I have I'm on the board of 21 companies and it's it's a lot of work but 21 companies. Yeah. But I love it. And how many biotech companies are in the portfolio? So I'm the only bio partner out of five. So so you you only be part Yeah. So it's like so you sit you sit on in every in every in every company company's board invest in basically until certain point and probably like series D you just wiped out. Yeah. It depends on the if we are co colleagues depends on the next round. Sometimes I become an observer and some companies that start not as a board member might become a board member. So it's a it's different. We just like to because we lead the investment and we write the biggest check on seed usually then we also on the board and I think it's important like too many seed and preed fund doesn't start a board. They say it's just overhead, but I think like once every quarter to say like okay, you said that you're going to do this and this is what you actually did. You know what went right, what went wrong, how the market is looking, let's evaluate our runway etc. It's very [snorts] good for the companies and you should start that as soon as possible and you know oversight is good you know so yeah so it's so we end like I think fund three was 81 something core investment and it all go again it all goes back to the parlor our pitch to RLP [clears throat] our investors is very simple you know we're a general seed fund the best markets Israel the Bay Area mainly but we can invest everywhere in the US etc each of You know we're general but each of us has our own uniqueness and the reason why the best entrepreneurs will come to us and then so with one check you get exposure to the best market to all seed not just bio not just tech not just AI not just everything [snorts] and we take you know board seat we lead we have enough equity in each company that we only have one metric for in our IC for investment only one [snorts] will this company return the entire fund we have to believe that each company. We make an investment and we you know fund three was 81 companies called companies. Each of them we invested. We had to we have to believe could at at the very least return the fund because of the power law. Most companies will not a few will and then we have enough money to to follow up invest and keep our equity in in the winners and that's how it works. So you know the [snorts] job of each of the GPS is to find one company that return the fund fund five GPS 5x fund that's you know we did our job. So how much how much of a dry powder do you leave usually for for it depends between half the fund to to third of the fund. It depends on the year depending on the demand depending depending a lot right [snorts] you want to leave enough dry. It also depends on the market. H that's where there's a big difference between you know crypto software AI and bio for example in some markets you can get product market fit fairly easy you can get revenue you're allowed to sell what you're making you have fast growing revenues so the dilution is not as harsh at follow-up invest rounds and in some markets like you know deep biotech if you develop a drug you are not allowed to sell anything until you get FDA approval and that can take a long time and cost a lot of money so you are more dependent on partnership revenues or just technical milestones and then until you get clinical data the dilution can be harsher. So you know the requirement of follow-up investment is different etc. Yeah. Mhm. By the way is like biotech as a separate is a separate vehicle separate fund. So you raise for like biotech for investors your LPS get like a diversified portfolio of little bit of biotech little bit of uh uh consumer internet B2B or it's all divided into kind of separate we have one how is it structured so we have fund one two three four and an opportunity fund but every fund and then and then you split within within the Yeah and again it's a so you split your and it's a totally equal uh partnership So we get the same salary and the same carrying and that means that we're helping each other and not kind of like it's it's a it's not every it's very hard to be a totally equal partnership, right? Not everybody is equal and sometimes somebody can be more lucky than other. One market can be harder than other and you know but if you trust and believe in your partners it's a long-term game. Every found is at least 10 years and it's almost your retirement job like it's your last job you'll ever do. So and sometimes you know biotech you know you invest during a time like now that biotech is down so you can get high equity and amazing companies and those companies can be the best companies in the bunch in seven eight years when it's all said and done and [snorts] one time you know you invest in AI when it was down or crypto when it was down and then 78 years might be up and you know hopefully not the other way around where you buy when when it's very hot and hypy and you sell when it's very low that's that's a that would be very Yeah. Well, it's important uh I mean it's less important for you guys because you invest in seed. So, uh for seed rounds, it's not that much important uh like the the macra, right? Because uh you don't know well where you will end up like because that's the like 10 years journey, right? So, in 10 years, you could not predict predict 10 years again. You don't know where econ economy will be in 10 years, right? So, for seed investors, you're not buying any market risk. So you're bypassing it because you could not really emulate it in any meaning. I don't think we bypass it. I think we just uh know that it's not under our control. We just accept it. So that's part of the risk of investing in seed. On the one hand, it's uh still less comparative than follow-up investing. You have less information. So it's harder to automate, right? I think AI will take everybody's job in the end. But like right now it's still you need to talk to humans and need to have a belief and conviction of a future that is uncertain and you need to be okay understanding the power. You need to be okay with half your companies going to zero. Like even the best investors you know if and if it if it doesn't happen it means that [clears throat] you're not ambitious enough. You won't get 100x if you don't get the zeros like you know the best companies are kind of mshot that but you know it's our job every time. every time. Like if we see a company that has a 10% chance to be a multi-billion dollar company, we should invest every time. And most people will not say, "What?" Like it's like 90% chance of failure. Like if you're p if you're the pessimistic guy in an early stage fund, the problem with is that you'll be right most of the time, but you will not make money. Pessimistic guy, you will never go If you're a pessimistic guy, you will never go to do venture business. That's also true. That's true. You could not be a pessimist because you're investing in future. I mean investing in future you should believe that this future if you do not believe the future exists you're not because the risk of early stage investment is not to invest in the wrong company it's not invest in the right company that's the biggest risk like if you didn't invest in Google if you didn't invest in one of those big companies then you're screwed and and one good investment can cover fear fear yeah the fear of missing out is something what is driving the venture capital uh markets right I mean to your point. Um we are all ready to lose uh but we are not ready to uh uh lose uh the opportunity right because if you bypass uh by bypass the opportunity uh and then this is Google or Meta or anything that where you are critical to yourself right that's where you actually miss out not where you investing yeah it's not that we like to lose our money with investment like it it hurts a lot and by the way this is where no I think the biggest struggle of being an investor over time is the struggle between what you understand mentally and what you feel emotionally. It's there are a lot of things we kind of know are true mentally but very hard emotionally. It doesn't matter how we know coldly that it's right. It's still hard. It's like telling somebody who just broke up that there are many fish in the sea and you'll find somebody else. Yes, it's kind of right most likely. But he doesn't want to hear it right now. is he's going through a heartbreak, right? So for investors like you know during an upturn during a bubble like [snorts] mentally you know you should sell to a bubble you shouldn't buy everything is hyped and all you know it's too expensive you shouldn't buy to a bubble but mentally like emotionally everybody like every company is getting a 10 term sheet you want to win everybody's raising up investing everything looks amazing and big and whatever whatever whatever so it's so hard to be part of the herd [snorts] and then during a downturn we are doing a biotech downturn mentally you know it's like the best time to invest you can get the most equity put in the best companies that you did diligence because you had time but emotionally it's uh horrible you know it's very hard to follow up invest like your best companies are getting only one term sheet for not a great price like it's emotionally very very hard and big companies are just closing left and right the market is very depressed but you have to see through it you have to see through it and I think again investing in the is a long game of being optimistic of investing through a long time in good times and bad times in companies that can be massive like and if you do that you'll be successful. Totally true. Uh so we are half time now. So uh I would suggest that uh this uh second half we uh are uh dedicating to uh biotech itself because you are not only an investor you are famously known for your research and your uh like projects you were involved in. So, so you are one of the uh like the true expert in longevity uh and uh I wanted to dedicate a little bit of time uh to this topic. So, you published uh the business case for longevity and argued that the potential there is like 38 trillion in value. Uh so maybe you can just elaborate a little bit on that uh and uh give your perspectives on the longevity longivity market itself. So how do you see it? uh because longevity uh I mean just uh I mean nobody's like uh really taking care at least on the like state level for like longevity. So what I thought is that like is it okay just first of all it's $ 38 trillion per year of healthy additional healthy year of life you know so it's a it's a huge market so let's unpack it first let's start with the word I think the word longevity is problematic it's a big tent where a lot of people who do a lot of very different things say the same words longevity some people that are biohackers call themselves longevity people some people who sell supplements, some people who work on the elderly, you know, there's a bunch of people they call themselves longevity. For me, longevity is more longevity biotech. That's what I'm interested at. Like I'm interested like hardcore solution that can in potentially increase lifespan for as long as we we want. Again, my goal in life is to end involuntary death, right? And nine of the 10 things that kills us, the biggest risk factor is how old you are. So aging is the main thing that kills us. So right now we don't have we don't have a healthare system. We have a sick care system where you know they wait until the damage accumulate and then present itself as a disease and then try to address a disease usually when it's too late. I think the best health care is to stay young and healthy. Like that's healthcare for me right? So when I talk to people in government, they see a lot of the problems facing western societies coming for longevity in their mind because people get older, get more chronic diseases and then the most expensive time is the last 20 years and they used to die immediately after getting social security now they live 20 years old more. So it's a problem of healthare and and pension. I heard I heard the statistics I heard the statistics that half of this budget goes to like the last year, right? Is it true that the last uh uh year is half of the expense of this entire pension fund? Yeah, it's more than that. It's the last like usually few weeks where the most expensive. But when I think about longevity, I'm don't I don't think about being 90 for 50 more years. I think about being 22 as long as I want. That's a very different vision of longevity and that solves all America problem that solves social security that solve Medicare, Medicaid, fertility which is a big issue in most of western societies you know it solves GDP because you have more healthy people you know productive which is just that's GDP for you so it solve all the major problem and I think that's our major fall like when you ask people do you want to live to 150 not a lot of people raise their hands but if you ask them do you want to cure cancer they'll raise their hand they Ask them, do you want to cure the, you know, you want to cure Alzheimer, they raise their hand. You want to cure heart disease, they raise their hand. Do you want to look good when you're old? They raise their hand. So, if you do all of that, it just means that you're young. Young and healthy, right? So, when people talk about lifespan and health span as two different things where lifespan is, you know, how many years you you're alive and health span is how many years you are healthy. [snorts] Right now there's a big discrepancy because people live to their 90s maybe or the 80s but they're only healthy for 50 years or something like that. But I think in the future it's kind of stupid differentiation. I think in the end it's all lifespan. Like you won't live to 200 being sick most of the time. You only live to 200 if you're healthy most of the time. Right? If we cure all disease we just live longer. And I think it's a noble pursuit. I think longevity now, especially radical longevity, is getting a bad reputation as being like tech bros trying to live longer on the expense of everybody else. For me, it's [snorts] just the endgame of one of humanity's biggest challenges and falls, which is tackling diseases. If you tackle all diseases, you are young, you know, and you know, right now the FDA doesn't consider aging to be a disease. But it is it's it's a it's a process that accumulate damage that manifest as diseases. So what GLP1's drug likeic showed us that if you attack the root cause of disease in that case, the root cause is people eating too much. What is GLP1 drugs? They just make you less hungry. You're not as hungry anymore. That's it. But this one thing, this breaking of this one addiction solve obesity, solve diabetes, solve sleep apnea, solve solve some fertility, solve, you know, it reduce Alzheimer problem, it solve a lot of hard problems. So one thing if you attack the root cause of disease, first of all, it's the biggest drug category in the world, right? It makes really no mountains of money. And B, it helps people. It helps all of us. like it changed my life for example and it's I believe in 10 20 years 90% of Americans will be on GLP once because it's such an important drug say but while some people have issues with food and some people are overweight [clears throat] everybody is aging everybody is aging and aging is a root cause for nine of the 10 things that kills us in in a different different different speed right different speed but everybody I when I invest in longevity and again something that I just generally authentically care But I try to invest. So I call it the plan A, B, C, D, plan for aging. And I try to invest especially in plan A, sometimes plan B. And I'm happy to to talk about it. But I wrote a blog post about the race to60 where I outlined what I like to invest in. [snorts] And I call it the race to 160 because humanity has already doubled lifespan twice. You know, a few thousand years ago, we used to live to the 20s and then during the industrial revolution, we doubled it to 40s. And now in modernity but this is because of the because of the mortality of the kids. That's a lot of it but not all of it. So let me finish. So and and now in modernity we doubled it again to around 80 years plus minus right as you said most of it was people not dying at a young age but not but not everything. Right. Because in and what I said in the race to 160 is like we only have one doubling to go. Why? Because we know that some people even 100 or 200 or 300 years ago live to their hundreds right you know our biology that we you know our technology which is our biology that we were born with if everything is optimal and we're very lucky can get us to live to 100 120. We have examples. We have people not great, not not enjoying their life maybe in the last 20 years, but we have examples of people that can live that long, but you know, we have no example of somebody living as far as we know, right? So, and I don't think we just randomly get there. I think we can only get there if we solve all the issues. Otherwise, it's a game of whack-a-ole where you try to cure this kind of cancer to get that kind of cancer or you cure this kind of to get that kind of heart disease. Right? Only if we really only things that can move the needle will get us there and that's the thing I want to focus on. Do you think uh Omry there is a person born today who will live through 160? I I believe so. I think there is a there is a chance for that and I tell you why. Um again with my plan ABC D for ending aging, we start with plan D which is death and we are all on plan D right now. Uh the famous Brian Johnson that's trying to optimize everything in his health is on plan D. I know. And Peter Ratia, the famous doctor is on plan D. We're all on plan D. Why? Because there's not amount of good, you know, exercise, sleep, nutrition, and supplement that will get you to live to 160, right? We all know that. That's plan D and we're all on it and it sucks. And a lot of longevity companies are still on plan D. They have something that might help you with 10 5% which is great, but you know, won't get you to 160. [snorts] Plan C is cryionics. You know, people trying to freeze themselves. It's not a solution, but it's a way to stop time. Maybe somebody in the future can can solve the issue. I know a bunch of companies in that space. I personally don't invest though. The only thing that is better than you know plan D is plan C, right? But it's not great plan. I don't like it. And then [snorts] plan B is by engineer. So you don't do you don't do you don't do plan D. Plan C. Yeah. I just don't personally plan D doesn't move the needle. C I don't like because they give agency for future generation, not our generation. Though some people that are very deep in in longevity are actually on plan because they believe they can solve it especially for their parents during our lifetime. [snorts] And the idea is like stopping time. If somebody had AIDS on the 80s and you froze them and somehow can throw them today, you can cure them, right? And how many other disease can we cure in the future? That's kind of the idea behind that. It's [snorts] a insurance policy. And then plan B is bioeng engineering and the root that trying to re understand the root cause of disease of you know different disease and find solution and cures and we invest in a bunch of companies there. The problem is plan B isn't you all diseases you don't really move the needle because something will kill you you know because everything get worse at the same time that's aging it's not just your heart and your like your heart and your brain and your immune system they all get worse over time. So it's only a a chance who will break first and manifest as a disease. But it's still worth doing. There's a business model for that. We invest in that. It matters. And plan A, at least for me, is alternative bodies or replacement. And the notion behind that is nature have solved aging. That's why the human species is a million years old, right? You know, the way nature solved aging is through having a baby. If you're a man and you have a baby when you're 20 or if you have a baby when you're 80, the baby is still zero year old and has a full lifespan, right? Because nature know how to reset lifespan if you go through through an embryo and human. We solved aging for cars, you know? I over the weekend I went to Mter and there was a bunch of like really old cars on the road that looks young and shiny. Why? Because maintenance. Yes. But mainly they replace parts. So if you get young genetically identical parts you know and that's you know and that's not the new idea you know science fiction is filled with idea of like getting parts from clones etc. But there are companies working on this space. We created one of those companies renewal bio out of Israel. The technology was on cover of nature just two years ago where the professor from the whitesman institute were able to get human embryos from stem cells. They call it steroid or stem cell derived embryo models. We published when we were day 14. Now we're day 23 24 25 beginning of gastrolation. It's a very exciting company which has ethical scalable way of producing young genetically identical sings with cells and tissues and organs and maybe one day a whole body right and that [snorts] could be a big cure for almost everything that's a kind of kind of you know moonshot thinking that we like we also invest in two other longevity companies a company out of the Bay Area two two of them out of the Bay Area one called permanence who is trying to develop molecules to reduce mutations um both to prevent cancer but also to prevent a lot of aging. A lot of aging is just mutation accumulating over time and a company called powerhouse bio which is working on the powerhouse of the cell the mitochondria producing precision therapies for mitochondria. So you know we put our money where our mouth is. Well, uh what about plan E? Um a convergence uh with electronics where we uh are becoming kind of uh artificial uh so our brain is kind of uh departed from our human uh bodies and uh where we have a fully applicable of ourselves. Yeah. With the consciousness. uh is it something what you think will uh be kind of a future of mankind [clears throat] question that there will be like a full convergence between like what we call now AI and machine uh to uh like human and bad first of all who knows right second I I talked about Brian Johnson as part of pal D but I met Brian he's a very smart nice guy and when you talk to him he he'll tell you to your face and I don't think he believes that his method will get you to live to 160 and beyond I think [snorts] what he believes that he what he preaches don't die. It's like stay alive for the next 20 years because AI is coming and then Mhm. Yeah. and going I still don't know between there and there a handwave AI will save us. Now AI might save us you know I I I don't know some people call it a singularity because you cannot predict after that point and who knows you know but I like to invest in things that I see how we get there. I think I see how we get there with replacement parts. Like I see that like just waiting around till the AI is smart enough to get into our body and fix everything from the inside or to upload us to the cloud. Well, I get pitches like that every day. It's it's funny being here in the Bay Area. You get the best pitches in the world. But um and you and you listen to them like you know, nobody will kick you out of a VC meeting for pitching uploads or stuff like that. It's very cool. Even if your business model is a is um welcome to the even if your business model is ads on your afterlife or one of the features is being able to simulate MDMA live. That's was part of the pitch. Imagine [snorts] the feeling you have an MDMMA if you press a button. I'm like what are you talking about? Anyhow um yeah so look I like the biology part. Maybe I'm too attached to my kind of kind of body and physicality. Again, I think I think can life work on other substrate or can we just instead of trying to fix the entire body just work on the brain and then connect everything else to a machine? Maybe. I don't know if that's a future kind of I'm excited about but um people are working on it. There's a company called science here that Max Hod are you investing in this personally no but again if I see the right pitch the right company I might but uh I haven't it's very hard I think I like longevity a lot but it's very hard to find scientifically valid things to do and usually when there is something scientifically valid there's a lot of money and energy behind it and there's a lot of kind of because people care about it so much it's almost like a religion like the fear of death is something that drives a lot of people to religion for example. It's uh they you have some some people are kind of weird and some ideas are kind of improbable. So you have to know what to bet on both people and technology. [clears throat]
Omar when you speak of like 160 um raised to 160 does that mean is it a kind of a like barrier? So if we live to 160 with AB uh uh plan, does it mean that we can extend it further to 200 and 250? I [snorts] mean it looks like if we start like with like proper AB plan and we deliver uh we will be able to like extend it further, right? There is no limit basically. I mean it could be like to raise 20,000. So there is nothing to actually uh I mean no no hurdle or no barrier further away right I mean once you like replace and regenerate everything probably you can just do it forever yeah yeah again don't catch catch me on the number 160 the the idea was you only have one doubling to go you know more than anything else right you know so it might be 140 it might be 180 like don't catch me with a specific number but but this this this doubling this doubling will actually be kind of no no No, no end, right? So, it will be like doubling or tripling and quadrupling. This is why I think it's so important. I think once we get there, it means that we have no upper limit, you know? It means that we solve all the issues cuz you just don't just get there. There might be a problem that crops up when you are 400. But I don't think so. I think if you are able to get to that age, it means that you have like complete regeneration and replacement and like you can at the same same amount live longer. Now, I'm not trying to eliminate death. I don't I don't think that's possible. I'm trying to eliminate um you know again my goal in life is is unwanted death like that's that's the thing I want like for much of most of us as long as we are healthy you know there's always more books to read and more parties to attend and more things to do right so and then just age and disease just creep us creep up on us too fast and then we just lose the capability and at some point like life is not worth living but you know if to just stay young and healthy. Most people, you know, would like and then if they don't like to, nobody stopped them to, you know, from jumping from a building or something, you know, I don't think we can cure that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And all sort of um actually disasters and you want some death, you just voluntary death. I think that's the the thing. Yeah. Yeah. Mhm. Absolutely. So uh let's speak a little bit about AI in biotech because it's like getting real big. I mean we spoke about how you automate your work inside NFX [snorts] with AI but I'm sure that all your like most of your companies are utilizing AI uh for a bunch of things. So how do you think AI is changing uh biotech landscape uh overall? Is it like real big? Do you see like any further benefits with LLMs uh for what your portfolio companies are doing? Good question. So I wrote two big blog post about it. One uh two years ago actually was the third wave of AI in bio because all the AI hype, you know, it wasn't the first wave. We had several waves of AI in bio. This is just the third the way I count it. And the second just recently is that the AI or Topia cannot exist without bio. So let me maybe take the both and just condense into one answer. Um when Dennis goes on stage or when some Atman goes to stage or when the CEO of Nvidia goes to stage and talk about the billions and trillions they want to invest in in AI usually they don't say oh and we're going to spend all this money to make funny memes right or we spend all this money to create a chatbot. No, they said we're going to spend all this money to get to superhuman level AI that can [snorts] cure all diseases, that can extend our lifespan, that can find new scientific discovery. That's all they're talking about. They're not talking about the next chatbot. And yet a lot of the companies in bio now that are based on those AI technologies that are actually doing what those people are saying or claiming and raising hundreds of millions of billions of dollars to do are doing are actually doing have hard time to raise right now and I was kind of annoyed about that. um you know seeing the next AI for whatever that many of them are not very defensible and the next version of the whatever LLM can destroy a thousands companies getting you know so many term sheets such a high valuation while bio companies actually using AI to do scientific breakthroughs that can really cure people really struggling to fund raise and they have defensibility because in bio no matter what we have IP you have like it doesn't matter if there's a new version of AI you still own the IP around your molecule and if you get approved then you got a broadcaster drug and the third wave of AI is like you know the first wave of AI was just using computers to do to design small molecules to fill fit pockets you know and the atom wise a bunch of companies like back in 2011 12 started around that the second wave of AI was when AI start understanding pictures you know this is dog this is mouse so people start using it to put this is sales with this disease, this is healthy cells and then do a phenotypic drug discovery where just throw a bunch of molecules on the diseased cells at a high throughput rate. Let the computer watch all the cells and see if some of them turn into a healthy phenotype as a way to develop drug drugs. That's the second wave and a bunch of companies recursion for example start from that and now we're at the third wave of AI and bio where it's a combination of you know people talk about LLM they talk about you know those software tools that you know read the entire internet and then they predict the next word there are LLMs for biology where instead of reading Wikipedia they read you know what evolution gave us which is all the protein and DNA sequences that survived until today. So it was kind of pre-trained by evolution and then you can use that to create LLMs that instead of telling you what the next word should be tell you what the next amino acid in a protein or the next DNA in a genome can be and you can use it to do genoti and to do the novel design of novel protein novel genomes and people are working on that on the cutting edge and things like alpha fold that can simulate protein folding that also help AI and then the third thing is like AI is becoming really good at detecting signal to noise and if you can close the loop on a specific problem. We have a company called manabio is using AI and automation to discover novel lipid and particle to solve drug delivery genetic drug delivery. So if you can close the loop where the AI reads a lot of data, suggests experiments, you use automation to do those experiments, test it on the real world, get the data back to AI, iterate, iterate, you can create models that can create novel uh drugs, novel delivery modalities, uh can simulate and kind of predict toxicity etc. And that is really useful. But in the end you get asset that you can develop as a drug or collaborate with other drug companies to produce you know a lot of different therapies to a lot of different indications eventually that's a very interesting thing uh well uh all humans are somewhat similar right I mean we share common DNA but we are so much different right and that's the reason why some drugs work and some don't right uh some uh like stuff really helps and from some actually damages right uh so uh do you think we are close to really like unlock uh it from like this language of nature we are coded in from A to Z so that there will be like a digital pen of picture or digital p of like a like 100% uh equal to what we are so that you can simulate uh any kind of new new molecular or new formula or whatever into like a specific uh um like personality. So um um do you think it's going to like happen in next 5 10 years that it will be kind of like 100% simulated to like every bit of uh me or every bit of you? Not in 5 to 10 years. What you're mentioning here is the really holy grail of the space, right? Because every other space when you build a house, you don't need to build a billion houses and see which one stands. And when you build a car, you don't have to build a billion cars, see who each one runs. You have, you understand the you understand the physics behind that. And you have simulators where you simulate and it usually work. That's why when rockets go now, you know, always, you know, to to orbit, usually it works on the first try because you have good simulation tools. In bio, we don't have good simulation tools. People joke that we have a lot of we killed mouse from disease many times. This is because we tried drugs on mouse in the past you know people forget but the first vaccine etc. The researchers tried it on themselves [snorts] and in the even if you go all the way back to the past past past our ancestors when they went to the jungle and decided oh should we eat that or not one of them had to try and one of them was like oh this is good and one of them died because he ate something tox toxic right you know so our ancestors were braver than us I guess or more desperate we don't have good drugs on human because we don't test on humans we test on animals first and only then on humans and there's reason for that which is we don't want to harm humans and a lot of drugs are either a toxic or b not effective enough [gasps]
I think in small ways will get constant improvement they're already that's one thing AI is good at is find biomarkers that are associated with a good outcome of disease so there are a lot of companies that you know usually when you have a drug and you look at a population it helps a third it doesn't do anything for a third and it hurt a third and now you can use a lot of data like multiomics data, RNA seek data, a lot of data on the entire population and try to find signal to noise find to find biomarkers that are associated with good outcomes and that's it started with oncology and now you have precision oncology where you only get a drug if you have the specific biomarkers and then pharma likes it and hate it. They like it because it's easier to get approval because you're you're more effective, right? They don't like it because they prefer to sell the drug to everybody because it's a big old market, right? But [snorts] but I think we're getting to the age of precision medicine in everything where they they based on the lot of data we can collect and AI kind of trying to find signals out of the noise that humans cannot find. We get you a personalized therapy that is your chance of working is higher and the chance for for bad outcomes is lower. Right? That will happen over time. 100% simulation. Even [snorts] if we have exponentially growing capabilities in computation, the problem also grows exponentially, right? We cannot even simulate one cell with current technology for any length of time. We can only simulate very small protein for nancond or less, right? So, and then the more atoms you add to the simulation and you need to simulate all the atoms interacting with all the atoms is also grows exponentially. So even if we have exponentially growing the problem is growing exponentially. So I think in small ways that are very important we can get better over time but 100% simulation I don't see how we are doing it unless we are living in simulation already and they are doing it. Yeah. [clears throat] So yeah so we will not see uh digital digital trials uh which will come in place of human trials or animal trials anytime soon. I think we'll see hybrid. I think we'll see with us already companies that are selling pharma companies with biomarkers and and things that will will help like exclusion criteria for clinical trials, better recruitments for clinical trials. So you have better chances of success. Look, drug are expensive not because pharma companies are greedy is because they're stupid. Like if we were better at developing drugs, they shouldn't be that expensive. That's that expensive because for the one drug that works we need to pay for the 90% of drugs that doesn't work that still cost us a billion dollars to develop right everybody wished we will be more effective better high yield at building drugs by the way I think as AI and automation will increase I believe in the next few years it's such a strong deflationary force right everything become cheaper like if you have a robot that can replace a coder at $200,000 a year code with $20,000 and then it's become $2,000 then become $20 right you have a huge deflation in the economy everything become which is for consumer great everything is becoming cheaper but also the GDP is kind of shrinking not exploding because everything is getting cheaper so fast right you need the market to explode in size to accumulate I think healthcare will become just going to become bigger bigger part of the economy until [clears throat] we can really apply automation AI and technology and healthcare to reduce cost because right now a lot of the new technology in healthcare actually increase cost. You create solution but expensive solution.
Okay. So yeah that's that's very much true. So um Omar maybe last few questions on my side. I know that um we are uh coming to the end of our um uh podcast. Um uh what do you think of this uh DNA enhancements? Uh uh now like my friend is working on uh the solutions for courses. So you can order a horse with with very specific uh skills, uh patterns, uh colors, even color of eyes, uh whatever you want, right? So you can just uh change the DNA and like make whatever horse you want for like consumer, for whatever client, right? So uh is it something what I mean obviously you can do it with people at some point very efficiently. So you can actually produce like better people from the very beginning, right? I mean not only solving the problem of aging but also uh having more like smarter people uh with better endurance whatever you want right better fit to current environment pollution whatever right so do you think it will ever come uh true or you think it will be like forbidden forever to to experiment great question and we only have two minutes so I'll end with that so first of all it's already start to happen there are companies in the Bay Area that if you do IVF you can read the genetics of your embryos and put that genetic information into those companies like orchid and they'll give you kind of dashboard of all your embryos based on their IQ and height and diseases and whatever and you can choose your best embryo. I think the problem is we don't have enough embryo once we have eggs from stem cells and you can create millions of embryos and the vision of gata which is it's still you just the best of you and that's just just from selection that will exist. So in small ways it's already exists right now. In big ways I talked to George Church from Harvard recently and he persuaded me if I talked about the plan AB ABCD plan for aging that there is a plan A plus or or S or superior plan and that's uh to to replacement and that's upgrades. So if you already replace, you know, why just replace your lane body with your lane body? Even if it's your young lane body, why not improve it and make it stronger, more resistant to cancer, more resistant to disease, faster, smarter, everything else, right? [snorts] And I I definitely am for it. I think companies like Renewal offer us like a ethical technical way of doing that. The problem is, are you investing in this sort of companies? Not yet. But again I I think it's almost inevitable because you know people care about their kids more than they care about anything and if they can make them healthier by a not getting disease like elephant doesn't get cancer because they have a lot of like tomosuppressor gene. If you can do it with humans you know you know it will be one of my theories is that in 50 years having kids the old fashioned way will be looked as cruelty because you didn't optimize your kids and improve it as much as possible to be resistant for disease smarter faster better in any way. So I see it happening. I think I think it's a good thing. I don't think everybody would look the same. People want different things. Uh and then uh you know I'm I'm excited about this future. Hopefully it will arrive sooner than better. Yeah. It it's not going to create inequality. You think? Yeah. Well, I think you can again usually the rich people get the first technology the technology first when it's expensive and bad. They think about this huge cell phone that rich people used to have and now everybody has a better cell phone that is way cheaper. So, and remember every generation you can just fix that inequality because the therapies will be cheaper and cheaper and better and better and more people will have access to them and [snorts] and every generation they can just improve their kids to be as good if not better than the last generation. So, the rich people might get the the crappy alpha version and the poor people might get the great delta version. So, thank you Omry. Thank you very much, Omry, and I hope to see you in person uh when I'm back to the valley and uh uh will show up in in NFX NFX office in Melo Park. Thank you. Uh so that was Omar Amir Dory, general partner and head of NFX Via and Victor Aloski uh Ventures from the Mele um podcast which is brought to you by R136 Ventures. Uh stay with us, sign up and hope to see you soon uh in our next series. Bye.