What are your interests?
Select categories to help us recommend content for you.
Let's Go!
Close queue History
Play full episodes to fill your queue.
Fathom beta logo
   
mute button
Not AI Processed
Previews and search are not yet available for this episode.

Autoplay will start you at the beginning of the episode.
stars icon stars icon
No Highlight Generated
episode icon Idea Machines
Institutional Experiments with Seemay Chou [Idea Machines #47]
Seemay Chou talks about the process of building a ne... more
Sep 1 2022 1h 13m
Chapter 1 9 sec
Ben: So since a lot of our conversation is going to be about it how do you describe Arcadia to a smart well-read person who has never actually heard of it before?
Chapter 2 6 sec
Seemay: Okay. I, I actually don't have a singular answer to this smart and educated in what realm
Chapter 3 11 sec
Ben: oh, good question. Let's assume they have taken some undergraduate science classes, but perhaps are not deeply enmeshed in, in academia. So, so like
Chapter 4 3 sec
Seemay: enmeshed in the meta science
Chapter 5 4 sec
Ben: No, no, no, no, but they've, they, they, they, they they're aware that it's a thing, but
Chapter 6 26 sec
Seemay: Yeah. Okay. So for that person, I would say we're a research and development company that is interested in thinking about how we explore under researched areas in biology, new organisms that haven't been traditionally studied in the lab
Chapter 7 5 sec
Ben: Nice. And how would you describe it to someone who is enmeshed in the, the meta science community?
Chapter 8 17 sec
Seemay: In the meta science community, I would, I would say Arcadias are meta science experiment on how we enable more science in the realm of discovery, exploration and innovation. And it's, you know, that that's where I would start. And then there's so much more that we could click into on that
Chapter 9 3 sec
Ben: And we will, we will absolutely do that. But before we get there I'm actually really
Chapter 10 11 sec
interested in, in Arcadia's backstory. Cuz cuz when we met, I feel like you were already, well down the, the path of spinning it up. So what's, there's, there's always a good story there. What made you wanna go do this crazy thing?
Chapter 11 47 sec
Seemay: So, so the backstory of Arcadia is actually trove. Soro was my first startup that I spun out together with my co-founder of Kira post. started from a point of frustration around a set of scientific questions that I found challenging to answer in my own lab in academia. So we were very interested in my lab in thinking about all the different molecules and tick saliva that manipulate the skin barrier when a tick is feeding, but basically the, the ideal form of a team around this was, you know, like a very collaborative, highly skilled team that was, you know, strike team for like biochemical, fractionation, math spec, developing itch assays to get this done
Chapter 12 59 sec
not a PhD style project of like one person sort of open-endedly exploring a question. So I was struggling to figure out how to get funding for this, but that wasn't even the right question because even with the right money, like it's still very challenging to set up the right team for this in academia
Chapter 13 59 sec
We started talking to angel investors, VCs people in industry. And that's how we learned that, you know, like itch is a huge area. That's an unmet need. And we had tools at our disposal to potentially explore that. So that's how tr started. And that I think was. The beginning of the end or the, the start of the beginning
Chapter 14 32 sec
like, as a scientist, like once you grapple with that, that the way things are now is not how they always have been. Suddenly you have an experiment in front of you. And so that is how Arcadia became born, because I realize. Couched within this trove experiment is so many things that I've been frustrated about that I, I, I don't feel like I've been maximized as the type of scientist that I am
Chapter 15
Ben: Nice
Chapter 16 1 sec
Seemay: Yeah. So that, that was the beginning
Chapter 17 18 sec
Ben: and, and so you, you then, I, I, I'm just gonna extrapolate one more, more step. And so you sort of like looked at the, the real, the type of work that you really wanted to do and determined that, that the, the structure of Arcadia that you've built is, is like perhaps the right way to go about enabling that
Chapter 18 4 sec
Seemay: Okay. So a couple things I, I don't even know yet if Arcadia is the right way to do it. So I
Chapter 19 59 sec
feel like it's important for me to start this conversation there that I actually don't know. But also, yeah, it's a hypothesis and I would also say that, like, that is a beautiful summary, but it's still, it was still a little clunkier than the way you described it and the way I described it
Chapter 20 59 sec
Like, and the more that went on and I, I had like lots and lots and lots of conversations with other scientists in academia, trying to find who would lead this, that it took probably about six months for me to realize like, oh, in the process of doing this, I'm actually leading this
Chapter 21 2 sec
it's always an important question for a founder to ask themselves
Chapter 22 43 sec
Ben: Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's really clutch. I appreciate you sort of going into the, the, the, the, the, the, like, not straight paths of it. Because, because I guess when we, we put these things into stories, we always like to, to make it like nice and, and linear and like, okay, then this happened and this happened, and here we are
Chapter 23 12 sec
Seemay: Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of reasons why one of the important reasons, which is absolutely not a criticism of academia, in fact, it's maybe like my support of the
Chapter 24 59 sec
mission in academia is around training and education. That like part of our job as PIs and the research projects we set up is to provide an opportunity for a scientist to learn how to ask questions
Chapter 25 32 sec
Another situation where you're trying to figure out how you, we, this collaborative effort with this reality and. Even in the best case scenario, it doesn't always feel great. Right?
Chapter 26
Ben: Yeah, it's
Chapter 27 25 sec
Seemay: I can't tell you yeah. What the outcomes are gonna be. So I did write grants on that and that was repeatedly the feedback. And then finally, there's, you know, this other thing, which is that, like, we didn't want to accidentally land on an opportunity for invi innovation. We explicitly wanted to find molecules that could be, you know, engineered for products
Chapter 28 29 sec
our hypothesis. If there is any that like. By borrowing the innovation from ticks who have evolved to feed for days to sometimes over a week that we are skipping steps to figure out the right natural product for manipulating processes in the skin that have been so challenging to, you know, solve
Chapter 29 8 sec
Ben: Yeah. And, and you it's there there's like that tension there between setting out to do that and then setting out to do something that is publishable, right?
Chapter 30 16 sec
Seemay: Mm-hmm mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. And I think one of the, the hard things that I'm always trying to think about is like, what are things that have out of the things that I just listed? What are things that are appropriately different about academia and what are the things that maybe are worth a second?
Chapter 31
Ben: mm
Chapter 32 2 sec
Seemay: they might actually be holding us back even
Chapter 33 37 sec
within academia
Chapter 34
Ben: yeah
Chapter 35 20 sec
Seemay: in a best case scenario publishing should be science should be in the driver's seat and publishing should be supporting those activities
Chapter 36
driver's seat
Chapter 37 10 sec
Seemay: dictating how the science goes on many levels. And, you know, I can only speak for myself that I, I felt that to be increasingly true as I advanced my career
Chapter 38 20 sec
Ben: yeah. And just, just to, to make it, make it really explicit that it's like the, the publishing is driving because that's how you like, make your tenure case. That's how you make any sort of credibility. Everybody's gonna be judging you based on what you're publishing as opposed to any other
Chapter 39 10 sec
Seemay: right. And more, I think the reason it felt increasingly heavy as I advanced my career was not even for those reasons, to be honest, it was because of my trainees
Chapter 40
Ben: Hmm
Chapter 41 14 sec
Seemay: if I wanna be out. Doing my crazy thing. I have a huge responsibility now to my students, and that is something I'm not willing to like take a risk on
Chapter 42 4 sec
careers are important to me. And if they wanna go into academia, I have to safeguard that
Chapter 43 30 sec
Ben: Yeah. I mean, it suggests. Sort of a, a distinction between sort of, regardless of academia or not academia between like training labs and maybe focused labs. And, and you could say like, yes, you, you want trainees in focus. Like you want trainees to be exposed to focused research. But like at least sort of like thinking about those differences seems really important
Chapter 44 13 sec
Seemay: Yes. Yeah. And in fact, like, you know, because I don't like to, I don't like to spend too much time, like. Criticizing people in academia, like we even grapple with this internally at Arcadia
Chapter 45 9 sec
Seemay: like there is a fundamentally different phase of a project that we're talking about sort of like new, creating new ideas
Chapter 46 25 sec
exploring de-risking and then some transition that happens where it is a sort of strike team effort of like, how do you expand on this?
Chapter 47 27 sec
Ben: Yeah, that's actually something I, I wanted to ask about more explicitly. And this is a great segue is, is sort of like where, where do ideas come from at Arcadia? Like how, you know, it's like, there's, there's some spectrum where everybody's from, like everybody's working on, you know, their own thing to like you dictating everything
Chapter 48 5 sec
Seemay: So I might even reframe the question a little bit to
Chapter 49 3 sec
not where do ideas come from, but how do ideas evolve? Because it's
Chapter 50 1 sec
Ben: please. Yeah. That's a much better reframing
Chapter 51 53 sec
Seemay: because it's rarely the case, regardless of who the idea is coming from at Arcadia, that it ends where it starts. and I think that that like fluidity is I the magic sauce
Chapter 52 59 sec
started out of like, oh, let's put out a Google survey. People can fill out where they pitch a project to us. And that like fell really flat because there's no conversation to be had there. And now they're basically writing a proposal
Chapter 53 24 sec
like just shy of about 30 people. I, this process will probably break again. once we hit like 50 people or something, cuz it's actually just like logistically a lot of people to cram into a room and there is a level of sort of like, yeah, and then there's a level of formality that starts to happen when there's like that many people in the room
Chapter 54 15 sec
Ben: that's that's really cool. And, and, and so then, then like, let's, let's keep following the, the evolutionary path, right. So an idea gets sandboxed and you collectively come to some conclusion that it's like, okay, like this idea is, is like, well worth pursuing then what happens
Chapter 55 18 sec
Seemay: So then and actually we're like very much still under construction right now around this. We're trying to figure out like, how do, how do we think about budget and stuff for this type of step? But then presumably, okay, the person starts working on it. I can tell you where we're trying to go
Chapter 56 13 sec
publications into a way to like actually integrate into this process. Like, ideally I would love it as CEO, if I can be updated on what people in the order are doing through our pub site
Chapter 57
Ben: Oh
Chapter 58 44 sec
Seemay: And that, like, I'm not saying they publish every single thing they do every day
Chapter 59 24 sec
So that's what we're trying to move towards, but there's a lot of challenges associated with that. Like if a, if a scientist is like needing to publish very frequently, How do we make sure we have the right resources in place to help them with that? There may be some aspects of that, that like anyone can help with like formatting or website issues or, you know, even like schematic illustrations to try and just like reduce the amount of friction around this process as much as possible
Chapter 60 34 sec
Ben: And I guess almost just like my, my concern with the like publishing everything openly very early. And this is, this is almost where, where I disagree with with some people is that there's what, what I believe Sahi Baca called like the, the like Wardy baby problem, where ideas, when you're first sort of like poking at them are just like really ugly and you like, can't even, you can't even, like, you can barely justify it to
Chapter 61 20 sec
anybody on your team who like, trust you let alone people who like don't have any insight into the process
Chapter 62 2 sec
Seemay: Yeah, totally. Yeah
Chapter 63 9 sec
Seemay: Well, I mean, yeah, no, I think that's a hard, hard challenge. I mean, and, and people, and I would say at a metal level, I get, I get a lot of that too. Like people pointing out all the ways Arcadia
Chapter 64
Ben: Yeah, I'm
Chapter 65 24 sec
Seemay: or potentially going to fail. So a couple things, I mean, I think one is that just, of course I'm not asking our scientists to
Chapter 66 5 sec
just to like make sure by the time it goes out into the world that you're capturing precious bandwidth strategically
Chapter 67 53 sec
Seemay: On the other hand though, like, you know, while we don't want like that totally raw thing, we are so far on the, under the spectrum right now in terms of like forgiveness of some wards. And, and it also ignores the fact that like, it's the process, right? Like ugly baby. Great. That's that's like, like the uglier the better, like put it out there because like you want that feedback
Chapter 68 29 sec
Arcadia is like process, not outcomes that like, you know, talking about it directly, as well as we have like an exercise in the beginning of thinking about like, what is the correct level of like failure rate quote unquote, and like what's productive failure
Chapter 69
Ben: Yeah
Chapter 70 17 sec
Seemay: So it almost doesn't matter what the answer to that question is
Chapter 71 10 sec
Ben: Yeah. And also, I, I think I'm not sure if you would agree with this, but like, I, I feel like even like failure is a very fuzzy concept. In this, in this context
Chapter 72 6 sec
Seemay: totally. I actually really hate that word. We, we are trying to rebrand it internally to pivots
Chapter 73 11 sec
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. I like that. I also, I also hate in this context, the idea of like risk, right? Like risk makes sense when it's like, you're getting like cash on cash returns, but
Chapter 74
Ben: when
Chapter 75 17 sec
Seemay: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can redefine that word in this case to say like, it's extremely risky for you to go down this safe path because you will be very likely, you know, uncovering boring things. That's a risk, right?
Chapter 76 16 sec
Ben: Yeah. And then just in terms of process, I wanna go one, one step further into the, sort of like the, the like strike teams around an idea. Is it like something like where, where people just volunteer do do they get, like how, how, how do you actually like form those teams?
Chapter 77 4 sec
Seemay: Yeah. So far there has not been like sort of top down forcing of people into things. I
Chapter 78 35 sec
mean, we are a small org at this point, but like, I think like personally, my philosophy is that like, people do their best work when they're, they feel agency and like sort of their own deep, inner inspiration to do it
Chapter 79
Ben: Mm-hmm
Chapter 80 19 sec
Seemay: because no one existing has that skill set. So that that's a level of like flexibility that like not everybody has in other organizations, right. That you have an idea now you can hire more people onto it. So I mean, that's like obviously a huge privilege. We have to be able to do that where now we can just like transparently be like, here's the thing who wants to do it?
Chapter 81 2 sec
Ben: yeah, yeah
Chapter 82
That's, that's very cool
Chapter 83 2 sec
Seemay: One more thing else. Can I just say one more thing about that
Chapter 84
Ben: of course you can see as many things as you
Chapter 85 49 sec
Seemay: yeah. Actually the fact that that's possible, I feel like really liberates people at Arcadia to think more creatively because something very different happens when I ask people in the room. What other directions do you think you could go in versus what other directions do you think this project should go, could go in that we could hire someone from the outside to come do. Because now they like, oh, it doesn't have to be me. Or maybe they're maybe it's because they don't have the skillset or maybe they're attached to something else that they're working on. So making sure that in their mind, it's not framed as like an either or, but in if, and, and that they can stay in their lane with what they most wanna do
Chapter 86 4 sec
Ben: Yeah, absolutely. And then the, the people that you would hire onto a
Chapter 87 13 sec
project, would they, like, so say, say, say the, the project then ends it, it reaches some endpoint. Do they like then sort of go back into the, the pool of people who are, are sandboxing? How do, how does that
Chapter 88 45 sec
Seemay: So we, So we haven't had that challenge on a large scale yet. I would say from a human perspective, I would really like to avoid a situation where like standard biotech companies, you know, if an area gets closed out, there's a bunch of layoffs. Like it would be nice to figure out how we can like, sort of reshuffle everybody
Chapter 89 8 sec
generalist computational generalist, something like that, where their job is literally to just work on like the first few months of any project
Chapter 90
Ben: oh
Chapter 91 28 sec
Seemay: And help kind of like, de-risk like, they're really tolerant of that process. They like it. They like trying to get something brand new off the ground. And then once it becomes like more mature with like clear milestones, then we can hire someone else and then they move on to like the next thing, I think this is a skill in itself that doesn't really get highlighted in other places
Chapter 92 14 sec
Ben: I, I think I'm in the same boat. Yeah, that, and that's, that's critical is like, there aren't a lot of organizations where you sort of like get to like come in for a stage of a project. In research, like there, it it's generally like you're, you're on this project
Chapter 93 5 sec
Seemay: And how often do you hear people complain about that in science of like, oh, so and so they're, they're
Chapter 94 3 sec
really great at starting things, but not finishing things. It's like, well, like how do we capitalize on that then?
Chapter 95 28 sec
Ben: yeah. Make it a feature and not a bug. Yeah, no, it's like, it it's sort of like having, I I'm imagining like sort of just different positions on a, a sports team, for example. And, and I feel like I, I was thinking the other day that that analogies between like research organizations and sports teams are, are sort of underrated right
Chapter 96 26 sec
Seemay: Right. That's so funny. I like literally just had a call with Sam Aman before this, where, where we were talking about this a little bit, we were talking about in a slightly different context about a role that I feel like is important in our organization of someone to help connect the dots across the different projects
Chapter 97 22 sec
mix, know what everyone's doing and help everybody connect the dots. And like, I feel like this is some sort of a supportive role. That's better understood on sports teams
Chapter 98 8 sec
Ben: Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, and, and the trick is, is really seeing it more like a team. Right. So that's like the, the overarching thing
Chapter 99 27 sec
Seemay: And then I'll just like, I don't know, just to highlight again though, how like these realities that you and I are talking about that I think is actually very well accepted across scientists. We all understand these different roles. Those don't come out in the very hierarchical authorship, byline of publications, which is the main currency of the system
Chapter 100 16 sec
I was primarily thinking about the main benefit being our ability to do different formats and in a very open way. But now I see that this there's this whole other thing that's probably had the most immediate impact on Arcadia science, which is the removal of the authorship byline
Chapter 101 4 sec
Ben: Mm. So, so you don't, you don't say who wrote the thing at all
Chapter 102 29 sec
Seemay: We do it's at the bottom of the article, first of all. And then it's listed in a more descriptive way of who did what, it's not this like line that's like hierarchical, whether implicitly or explicitly and for my conversations with the scientists at Arcadia, like that has been really like a, a wonderful release for them in terms of like, thinking about how do they contribute to projects and interact with each other, because it's like, it doesn't matter anymore that that currency is like off the table
Chapter 103 6 sec
Ben: Yeah. That that's very cool. And can, can I, can I change tracks a little bit and ask you about model organisms?
Chapter 104
Ben
Chapter 105 11 sec
so like, and this is, this is coming really from my, my naivete, but like, like what, what are model organisms? And like, why is having more of them important?
Chapter 106 47 sec
Seemay: So there's, this is super, super important for me to clarify there's model organisms and there's non-model organisms, but there's actually two different ways of thinking about non-model organisms. Okay. So let me start with model organisms. A model organism is some organism that provides an extremely useful proxy for studying typically like either human biology or some conserved element of biology
Chapter 107 35 sec
So, you know, the fact that like we have. Very similar genetic makeup to mice or flies. Like there's some shortcuts you can take in these systems that allow you to like quickly ask experimental questions that would not be easy to do in a human being. Right. Like we obviously can't do those kinds of experiments
Chapter 108 6 sec
Ben: can I, can I, can I just double click right there? What does it mean to like set it up? Like, like what, what does it mean? Like to like, yeah
Chapter 109 16 sec
Seemay: Yeah. I mean, there's basic anything from like Turing, right? Like you have to learn how to like cultivate the organism, grow it, proliferate it. Yeah. You gotta learn how to do like basic processing of it. Like whether it's like dissections or
Chapter 110 20 sec
isolating cell types or something, usually some form of genetics is very useful
Chapter 111 2 sec
Ben: Yeah
Chapter 112 35 sec
Seemay: fantastic for some other reason. You know, whether it's cultivation or maybe something related to their biology. And so that's that's model organisms and. I am very much pro model organisms. Like our interest in non-model organisms is in no way in conflict with my desire to see model organisms flourish, right
Chapter 113 59 sec
canonical model organisms in terms of like tooling and sort of community effort around it
Chapter 114 22 sec
circulation, your skin barrier, to make sure it's one blood meal at each of its life stages happen successfully and can happen for days to over a week
Chapter 115 6 sec
Ben: Yeah. And so, so I was gonna ask you why ticks are cool, but I think that that's sort of self explanatory
Chapter 116 9 sec
Seemay: Oh, they're wild. Like they, like, they have this like one job to do, which is to drink your blood and not get found out
Chapter 117 14 sec
Ben: and, and I guess like, is there, so, so like with ticks, I I'm trying to, to frame this, like, is there something useful in like comparing like ticks and mosquitoes? Do they like work by the same mechanisms? Are they like completely different
Chapter 118 4 sec
Seemay: yeah. There's no, there's definitely something interesting here to explore because blood
Chapter 119 6 sec
feeding as a behavior in some ways is a very risky behavior. Right. Any sort of parasitism like that. And actually blood
Chapter 120 1 sec
Ben: That's trying to drink my blood
Chapter 121 33 sec
Seemay: Yes. That's the appropriate response. Blood feeding actually emerged multiple times over the course of evolution in different lineages and mosquitoes, leeches ticks are in very different clouds of organisms and they have like different strategies for solving the same problem that they've evolved independently
Chapter 122
Ben: Mm
Chapter 123 15 sec
Seemay: feed for a few seconds. If they're lucky, maybe in the range of minutes, leaches are like minutes to hours
Chapter 124 32 sec
like immediately numbing of the local area to getting it out. Right. Undetected, Lees. They they're there for a little bit longer, so they have very cool molecules around blood flow like that there's a dilation, like speeding up the amount of blood that they can intake during that period
Chapter 125 8 sec
Ben: Yeah. Okay. That, that makes a lot of sense. And so, so they really are sort of unique in that temporal sense, which is actually important
Chapter 126 17 sec
Seemay: Yeah. And whether it's positive or not, it does seem to track that duration of that blood meal at least correlates with sort of the molecular complexity in terms of Sliva composition from each of these different sets of organisms. I just list. So there's way more proteins in other molecules that
Chapter 127 3 sec
have been detected int saliva as opposed to mosquito saliva
Chapter 128 11 sec
Ben: And, and so what you're sort of like one of your, your high level things is, is like figuring out which of those are important, what mixture of them are important and like how to replicate that for youthful purposes?
Chapter 129 2 sec
Seemay: Yeah. Right, exactly. Yeah
Chapter 130 18 sec
Ben: and, and, and are there other, like, I mean, I, I guess we can imagine like farther into Arcadia's future and, and think about like, what do you have, like, almost like a, like a wishlist or roadmap of like, what other really weird organisms you want to start poking at?
Chapter 131 21 sec
Seemay: So actually, so that, that is originally how we were thinking about this problem for non-model organisms like which organisms, which opportunities and that itself has evolved in the last year. Well, we realized in part, because of our, just like total paralysis around this decision, because
Chapter 132 59 sec
what we didn't wanna do is say, okay, now Arcadia's basically decided to double down on these other five organisms
Chapter 133 59 sec
which species should you settle on? I don't know. Like there's so many, right? Like, so then we started collecting like as many we could get our hands on through publicly available databases or culture collections
Chapter 134 23 sec
prediction pipelines that we could be running across these different genomes depending on your question, it also may be a different set of things, but wouldn't it be nice to sort of just slightly turn the ES serendipity around, like, you know, what was around you versus like, can we go in and actually systematically ask this question and get a little closer to something that is useful?
Chapter 135 34 sec
Seemay: and I think the amazing thing about this is. You know, I, and I don't wanna ignore the fact that there's been like tons of work on this front from like the field of like integrative biology and evolutionary biologists. Like there's so much cool stuff that they have found. What I wanna do is like couple their thinking in their efforts with like the latest and greatest technologies to amplify it and just like broaden the reach of the way they ask those questions
Chapter 136
Ben
Chapter 137
Right. Yeah
Chapter 138 4 sec
Seemay: like, where can we go from here now that we have all these different technologies at our disposal?
Chapter 139 30 sec
Ben: Yeah. No, that's, that's extremely cool. And I wanted to ask a few questions about Arcadia's business model. And so sort of like it's, it's a public fact, unlike a lot of research organizations, Arcadia is, is a for-profit organization now, of course, that's that's a, you and I know that that's a legal designation
Chapter 140
Seemay: Yeah
Chapter 141 20 sec
Ben: not a, it's not a non-profit organization. And then on the other hand, under the spectrum, you have maybe like something like a hedge fund where it's like, what is like the only purpose of this organization in the world is to turn money into more money
Chapter 142
Seemay
Chapter 143 2 sec
Yeah. Yeah. So, okay. This
Chapter 144 2 sec
Ben: and like how you sort of came to that, that
Chapter 145 16 sec
Seemay: Yeah. This was not a straightforward decision because actually I originally conceived of the Arcadia as a, a non-profit entity. And I think there were a lot of assumptions and also some ignorance on my part going into that. So, okay. Lemme try and think about the succinct way to tell all this
Chapter 146 1 sec
Ben: take, take, take your time
Chapter 147 34 sec
Seemay: okay. I started talking to a lot of other people at organizations. Like new science type of organizations. And I'll sort of like refrain from naming names here out of respect for people. But like they ran into a lot of issues around being a nonprofit, you know, for one, it, it impacted sort of like just sort of like operational aspects, maintaining a nonprofit, which if, if you haven't done it before, and I learned like, by reading about all this and learning about all this, like it maintaining that status is in and
Chapter 148 9 sec
of itself and effort, it requires legal counsel
Chapter 149 3 sec
Ben: Yeah
Chapter 150 26 sec
Seemay: Yep. And you have to go into it prepared for that. So it also introduces some friction around like how quickly you can iterate as an organization on different things
Chapter 151
Ben: Mm
Chapter 152 9 sec
Seemay: And so that sort of like reversibility was also important to me given that, like, I didn't know exactly what Arcadia would ultimately look like, and I still dunno
Chapter 153 1 sec
Ben: Yeah. So it's just more optionality
Chapter 154 5 sec
Seemay: Yeah. And another point is that like I do have explicit for profit interests for
Chapter 155 59 sec
Arcadia. This is not like, oh, I like maybe no. Like we like really want to commercialize some of our products one day. And it's, it's not because we're trying to optimize revenue it's because it's very central to our financial experiment that we're trying to think about, like new structures
Chapter 156 59 sec
Like basic science
Chapter 157 45 sec
dividing line for this. And so I think it puts the onus on us at Arcadia though, to continuously be rigorous with ourselves accountable to ourselves, to like define our values and mission
Chapter 158 13 sec
Ben: Yeah. That was actually something that I was going to ask about just in, in terms of, I think, what sort of like implicitly. One of the reasons that people wonder about
Chapter 159 42 sec
the, the mixture of like research and for profit status is that like the, the, the time scales of research is just, are just long, right?
Chapter 160 16 sec
Seemay: Yeah, no, it's true. I mean, there were actually other people interested in funding, our Arcadian every once in a while I get reached out to still, but like me Jud and Sam and Che, like we went through the ringer together. Like we went on this journey together to get here, to
Chapter 161 51 sec
decide on this. And I think there is, I think built in an understanding that like, there's a chance this will fail
Chapter 162 7 sec
Seemay: delineating what the priorities are. The priority is the
Chapter 163 6 sec
subservient to that. And if it doesn't work fine, we will still iterate on that like top priority
Chapter 164 15 sec
Ben: Yeah, it would also be, I mean, like that would be cool. It would also be cool if, if you, I mean, it's just like, everybody thinks about like growing forever, but I think it would be incredibly cool if you all just managed to make enough revenue that you can just like, keep the cycle going
Chapter 165 23 sec
Seemay: Yeah. It also opens us up to a whole new pocket of investments that is difficult in like more standard sort of like LP funded situations. So, you know, given that our goal is sustainability now, like things that are like two to five X ROI are totally on the table
Chapter 166 1 sec
Ben: Yeah. Yeah, yeah
Chapter 167 10 sec
Seemay: actually that opens up a huge competitive edge for us in an area of like tools or products that like are not really that interesting to
Chapter 168 2 sec
LPs that are looking to achieve something else
Chapter 169 48 sec
Ben: yeah, with like a normal startup. And I think that I, I, that that's, I think really important. Like I, I think that is a big deal because there's, there's so many things that I see And, and it's like the two to five X on the amount of money that you could capture. Right. But like the, the, the amount of value that you create could be much, much larger than that
Chapter 170 4 sec
Seemay: yeah. I'm yeah. I think that's the vibe
Chapter 171 2 sec
Ben: that is an excellent vibe. And, and speaking
Chapter 172 28 sec
with the vibe and, and you mentioned this I'm, I. Interested in both, like how you like find, and then convince people to, to join Arcadia. Right. Because it's, it's like, you are, you are to some extent asking people to like play a completely different game
Chapter 173 30 sec
Seemay: yeah. It's funny. Like I get asked this all the time, like, how do you protect the careers or whatever of people that come to Arcadia? And the solution is actually pretty simple, even though people don't think of it, which is you Don. You don't try and convince people to come. Like we are not trying to grow into an infinitely large organization
Chapter 174 59 sec
50 people is like the perfect number 75 is. And you know, we're actually just trying to figure out like, what is, what are the right ingredients for the thing we're trying to do?
Chapter 175 7 sec
And if they literally haven't applied anywhere outside of academia, like that's an opportunity for me to push
Chapter 176
Ben: Mm
Chapter 177 50 sec
Seemay: I'm very worried about that. Like, I, I don't want them to be quote unquote, making a sacrifice that doesn't resonate with where they're trying to go in their career
Chapter 178 49 sec
for you and actively participate in all the meta science experiments that we're doing around publishing translation, technology, all these things, right?
Chapter 179 3 sec
Seemay: if that happens. Yeah, it's harder once they're here
Chapter 180 5 sec
Ben: and, and so, so the like, The, they tend to be people who are sort of like already
Chapter 181 12 sec
thinking, like already have like one foot out the door of, of academia in the sense of like, they're, they're already sort of like exploring that possibility. So they've so you don't have to like get them to that point
Chapter 182 36 sec
Seemay: Right. Yes. Because like, like that's a whole journey they need to go on in, on their own, because there's so many reasons why someone might be excited to leave academia and go to another organization like this. I mean, there's push and pull. Right. So I think that's a challenge, like separating out, like, like what is just like push, because they're like upset with how things are going there versus like, do they actually understand what joining us will entail?
Chapter 183 9 sec
Seemay: So like sometimes like, you know, I push people, like what, where else have you applied for jobs? And they, if they can't seem to answer that very well I say, okay, let me change
Chapter 184 39 sec
this question
Chapter 185 10 sec
Ben: Yeah, that's a really good point. And so, so this is almost a selfish question, but like where do you find these people? Right? Like you seem to, you seem to be very good at it
Chapter 186 8 sec
Seemay: Yeah. I actually don't I don't, I, I don't know the answer to that question fully because we
Chapter 187 27 sec
only just recently said, oh my God, we need to start collecting some data through like voluntary surveys from applicants of like, how do they know about us? You know? It seems to be a lot of like word of mouth, social media, maybe they read something that I wrote or that Che wrote or something
Chapter 188 12 sec
Ben: Yeah, I, but, but it is, it is like, it sounds like it does tend to be inbounds, right? Like it tends to be people like reaching out to you as opposed to the other way around
Chapter 189 12 sec
Seemay: Yeah. You know, and that's not for lack of effort. I mean, there have been definitely times where. We have like proactively gone out and tried to scout people, but it does run into that problem that I just described before of like
Chapter 190
Ben: Yeah
Chapter 191 4 sec
Seemay: if you find them yourself, are you trying to pull them in and have they gone through their own
Chapter 192 22 sec
journey yet?
Chapter 193 18 sec
Ben: Yeah, no, I mean that, that, frankly, that, that squares with my, my experience sort of like roughly, roughly trying to find people who, who fit a similar mold. So that that's, I mean, and that, that suggests a strategy, right. Is like, be like, be good at setting up some kind of lighthouse, which you, you seem to have done
Chapter 194 17 sec
Seemay: The only challenge with this, I would say, and, and we are still grappling with this is that sort of approach does make it hard to reach candidates that are sort of like historically underrepresented, because they may not see themselves as like strong candidates for such and such. And
Chapter 195 17 sec
so now we're, now we have this other challenge to solve of like, how do we make sure people have gone through their own process on their own, but also make sure that the opportunity is getting communicated to the right people and that they like all, everybody understands that they're a candidate, you know
Chapter 196 14 sec
Ben: Yeah. And I guess so, as long as we're recording this podcast, like what, what is that like, like if you were talking to someone who was like, what does that process even look like? Like what would I start doing? Like what would you, what would you tell someone?
Chapter 197 2 sec
Seemay: Oh, to like explore a role at Arcadia
Chapter 198 4 sec
Ben: yeah. Or just like to like, go through that, like, like to, to start going through that
Chapter 199 18 sec
Seemay: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess like, there's probably a couple of different things. Like, I mean, one is just some deep introspection on like, what are your priorities in your life, right? Like what are you trying to achieve in your career? Beyond just like the sort of ladder thing, like what's the, what are the most important, like north stars for you?
Chapter 200 29 sec
like for a place like Arcadia or any of the other sort of like meta science experiments, That has to be part of it somehow. Right. Like being really interested and passionate about being part of finding a solution and being one of the risk takers for them. I think the other thing is like very pragmatic, just like literally go out there and like explore other jobs, please
Chapter 201 29 sec
Seemay: Yeah. Like, and like go get that information for yourself. And then you will also feel a sense of like security, because like, even if I die and Arcadia dissolves, you will realize through that process that you have a lot of other opportunities and your skillset is highly valuable
Chapter 202 19 sec
armed with information, like one of my goals with like compensation for example, is to be really accurate about making sure we're hitting the right market value for you and being equitable across the organization at Arcadia
Chapter 203 39 sec
Ben: no, that that's really good. I, I think it's important for people to, to think about that more. And, and I guess sort of to, to start to bring things more to a close Elon ger pointed out a really good question on, on Twitter. And so, and, and I'm sure you don't have like a, a. A really clear answer
Chapter 204
that?
Chapter 205 58 sec
Seemay: there's so many, uh, by younger me, I mean, I've always been sort of like, I mean, I thought I saw Ethan reply to it too, about like, so that's the founder mentality basically. And I think he is something he said in there, I was like, oh, that's totally true. Like, I'm a definite like addict of like chaos and like disruption, you know?
Chapter 206 36 sec
people feel some agency to be agents of that change, because that is what happened for me. Right. Like when I started realizing like, oh, holy shit, like structures have changed before in history. Like what we're doing right now, isn't this like immutable thing. And then I started having conversations with other scientists that was key
Chapter 207 8 sec
Seemay: like that is like, like agency and then optimism around that
Chapter 208
Ben: Yeah
Chapter 209 4 sec
Seemay: we need to like, get that across to scientists in like the next generation
Chapter 210 7 sec
Ben: And, and do you have, I mean, it's a very valid answer to just say, like, it's an innate trait in you that
Chapter 211 17 sec
comes from wherever, but like, do, do you have any sense of like what sort of instilled both that, that agency and optimism in you? Right. Like how do we, how do we encourage more agency and optimism in people?
Chapter 212 8 sec
Seemay: Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I mean, I think one thing we cannot ignore is that there's a huge amount of privilege here. Like
Chapter 213 32 sec
Seemay: I have access to resources. Both like throughout my life, as well as in my relationship with Jed, that allows me to like have a broader solution space to consider. So I, I, that's very important to remember on more personal note, I think I I've thought about this a little bit
Chapter 214 2 sec
like questioning a system and then deciding to
Chapter 215
Ben: Taking
Chapter 216 43 sec
Seemay: you know, step away from it or, or explore around it or something
Chapter 217 11 sec
Ben: Yeah. A thought that actually just came to me, I'd be interested in, in your response to it is like almost it, it's it not just encouraging people to be a agent, but then like
Chapter 218 31 sec
rewarding that agency. Like what, what, what, what I feel like I feel like there there's right now, almost like not a strong correlation between people acting energetically
Chapter 219 27 sec
Seemay: Yeah, I know. So I struggle with that. And I thought about that before. The reason I struggle with it is basically once you start, anytime you start putting metrics to something or rewarding a behavior, you may accidentally corrupt the ability to source like genuine behaviors in that regard. Right. And like, as someone who's like more entrepreneurial in their thinking, or like more of a disruptor, like the
Chapter 220 20 sec
greatest like reward you can give me is to not sit there and like obsess over this concept
Chapter 221 2 sec
Ben: Yeah, totally
Chapter 222 23 sec
Ben: well this is, this is awesome. I, I really appreciate you, like going, going into this and, and sort of like being really like, straightforward about the, like the tensions and the thought process. And I guess something that I, I like to ask people is just like, what, what is something that you think people should be thinking about more that they're not
Chapter 223 11 sec
Seemay: I think they should be thinking more about how to like, in the meta science space about how to make more of the building process like visible. Actually this relates to a question that happened on your
Chapter 224 20 sec
thread that I was like, oh my God, I like wanna answer that. But not for the reasons that person probably thinks they were like, basically they were like, you know, like, why do you think you'll succeed when Calco didn't
Chapter 225 1 sec
Ben: can't even, we can't even benchmark against it
Chapter 226 26 sec
Seemay: to compare and I would love to avoid the pitfalls. I mean, I think there's some obvious differences between us, but it actually, the larger point is like these experiments have to happen openly
Chapter 227 1 sec
Ben: Yeah
Chapter 228 6 sec
Seemay: and we can't learn together if we can't talk about it. So would love to answer that question somehow, but I can't
Chapter 229 4 sec
Ben: I am so on board with that. Let's, let's figure it out
Chapter 230 1 sec
Seemay: awesome
Chapter 231 4 sec
Ben: all right. Well, see, man, thank you so much for, for being on the podcast. I'm deeply
Chapter 232 48 sec
Seemay: Yeah, you're welcome
Chapter 233 15 sec
liked this episode of the podcast in particular, You might want to listen to the ones that I've done with Arthur. And Ilan ger
Like
Clip
Share
Transcript
More
Play Full