JLC Turns Three!

Original Art Credit: Jon Lam (@tyrannos00r)

Wow, everyone. I feel so honored and humbled that you visit my tiny little corner of the Internet sometimes.

Thank you for your continued support and online interactions.

And now, some Salient Factoids from Year 3!
(Year 1 recap | Year 2 recap)

Stats:

Pageviews: 724,000+
Total Posts: 458
Total Tweets (ongoing): 16,900+
Blog Carnivals: 1 #RealTimeChem

(Could it be that ChemCarnivals have dropped out of favor? Or am I just not playing along like I should be?)

Podcasts (4): Collapsed Wavefunction's Bad Science in the Movies, Chemjobber's Start-up Adventure, Calcium Redux, Plagiarism Roundtable

(I still owe you guys those chemical pronunciations...I haven't forgotten!)

Elsewhere: Carrie Arnold of Science Careers asked me about grad school. Still pinch-hitting at Food Matters. I spoke with reporters from Nautilus and Chemistry World, but I've not yet seen their stories.

R.I.P. The Haystack, my first blogging home.

Recurring Themes: Cool reactions (hydrogenation, peroxides, Pauson-Khand, cyclobutanones, ghostly copper); start-ups, #MegaPharma, faculty moves, corrections, #chemjobs, activism, stock photo WWWTP?, book reviews, cool structures

Friday Fun: Corporate Indicator? Refrigerator.

Here's a picture of our work fridge:

No, we didn't just clean it out; this is how it's looked all week. Amazing how little it's used when the company only employs a handful of people.

Gone are the niceties of early start-up life, the beer, the free soda, the fresh fruit and snacks. We don't even stock milk for coffee anymore. Note what's also missing: Forgotten lunches. Tupperware. Old birthday cake. Fast food leftovers.

That seltzer on the right? The boss's. Ditto the hard lemonade in the drawer. The Coke? The part-time facilities guy. I don't even know who owns the bruised fruit.

The champagne, however? That's mine. Relic of a more optimistic era - I was going to crack that when we won our first big contract.

Been sitting there for over a year.

Happy (?) Friday,
See Arr Oh

Friday Fun: Stacked Up

Know how many business cards you accumulate during the first few years of a start-up?

It's 20 cards per 1/4 inch...

...a lot.

Happy Friday, everyone!

SAO

Pebble: Turning 'Virtual' to 'Actual'

I've watched the story of Kickstarter darling Pebble with great interest. Last year, their humble $100,000 goal to build a "Dick Tracy-style" smart-watch exploded into a ten million dollar campaign almost overnight. With the increased demand (~70,000 backers) came headaches - suddenly, Pebble had to have engineers, infrastructure, supply chains, and every other concern of a physical, bricks-and-mortar company.

A Bloomberg article from this morning, "Pebble Learns Why Most Startups Make Software," neatly summed up the situation: "Hardware is Hard." It's a similar sentiment to that expressed by many small biotechs: You need molecules made to test your theories and cure your target disease, but you don't want the staff, shipping, or facility overhead sitting on your cost sheet.

Thus, Pebble mimics a 'Virtual' Pharma company, where you get most everything done by off-site CROs. The model works great when you can control demand, whether shipping watches or drugs, but you have less control over how fast either gets done since you aren't personally building them!

Result: Customers get angry, or clinical trials get delayed.

I need to do more digging to paint a full picture, but the situation also mirrors Big Pharma. Over the past few decades, as mergers occur, labs are closed, equipment sold off, and long-time staff let go, pharma has found itself in a similar predicament: Who makes the molecules? For now, the outsourcing boom continues unabated, but one wonders if tech cautionary tales like Pebble's will inspire the next generation of pharma start-ups to move back to a model with (gasp!) actual chemists, hoods, and reagents.

Here's to incubators and shared synthesis spaces.

"Under 40" Biotech Billionaires?

I assume he started young.
Credit: Forbes

Since the dawn of capitalism, Americans have been entranced by rich youngsters. Their quirks, foibles, and outrageous lifestyles make magazines' front pages and serve as cultural touchstones; Richie Rich, Eloise, Bruce Wayne, and Montana Max all represent the genre well.

Forbes recently got into the "Youngest Billionaires" game, with the 2013 list featured prominently on the website. Forbes profiled 29 individuals under 40 with net worths >$1 billion, whose life stories reveal several interesting trends.

How does one become an "Under-40" billionaire?

1. Drop out of college to start a tech firm, or
2. Inherit your wealth.

That's just about everyone on the list. By 'tech,' I mean computers, gadgets, or apps - nary a biologist or chemist among the ranks (there are three engineers, but they've made their fortunes on the business side of things).

Thought Experiment: What would one need in order to be a baby-faced biotech billionaire? 

(For the purposes of this exercise, we'll ignore inheritance, and focus on "bootstrapping" from a standard middle-class childhood.)

For one, you'd likely need to forego college, and probably grad school. A five-year Ph.D., coupled with a 3-year postdoc shaves eight potentially game-changing years out of your 20s and 30s. Not to mention you're still paying back student loans and likely making below-market wages the entire time. Make no mistake, you'll have to start early, and perhaps look to hire your Ph.D. friends on the other side.

Next, you need what folks in the tech sector call a killer app. What does that mean for biotech? Something cheap to produce, easy to sell, relatively non-toxic and easily handled, and usable by people around the globe. A simple cancer diagnostic, perhaps, or a revolutionary photocatalyst. Maybe a new strain of fungi or bacteria for food production, or a serendipitous discovery of a new dye or drug (Hey, it worked for Perkin!)

Credit: Shutterstock

Third, since you'll have to weigh each wild idea or ground-shaking concept you create against its future commercialization value, you'd need a fundamental shift in your view of scientific communication. Open-access journals, blogs, national meeting presentations? Not for you. Timely patent applications and I.P. guardianship will be your bread and butter, so no sense in risking inadvertent disclosures. 

So, follow these easy 1-2-3 steps to biotech billions, right? Well, of course it's never that easy. Luck plays a crucial role in start-up ventures, as do connections. In this field, one's credibility might be undermined without a college degree, which might make initial fundraising tough. The barrier to entry might also be too high; tech entrepreneurs can start with a laptop, but biotech needs lab space, reagents, journal access, safety gear...the list goes on and on.

Readers, I'm sure this sounds nice and logical on paper, but I must have missed something along the way. Can you think of any high-net-worth youngsters who cut their teeth in chemistry? Why don't more young people see science entrepreneurship as a valid career direction?

Chem Coach Carnival, Day One

It's a gorgeous Fall day outside, a perfect way to kick off National Chemistry Week 2012. We've had a few bites on the #ChemCoach carnival already, so let's cut to the chase.

1. Julie, Associate Faculty. Julie blogs at The Stoichiometric Equivalent. She's a new mom, currently teaching one class. Julie teaches labs, lectures, grads, and maintains Blackboard for her class. She was hired in a most unusual way (as chemistry profs go) - by playing a flute concert. Way to be first, Julie!

2. Azmanam, O-Chem Lecturer. Adam blogs at Chemistry Blog. He's psyched to be doing exactly what he always wanted to do - teach chemistry - and has a bunch of really fun stories about on-the-fly analogies, 'suctration,' and Peyton Manning.

3. Laura, President and COO, Quintessence Bioscience. Laura blogs at The Next Element. She wears a lot of hats. She was Employee #1 at a small start-up biotech, and has optimistically slogged through 22 Wisconsin winters.

4. Stephen, Assoc. Prof. and Department Chair. Stephen blogs at The Simple Candle. Instead of a traditional postdoc, Stephen returned home to Oklahoma City to found a new charter high school. He knows a hydrogen bond when he sees one, and students have called him "1% man, 99% science!"

5. David, UK Undergraduate. David blogs at Chemically Active. He has a bunch of great advice for UK-based students seeking chemistry careers. Once, during an interview, he blurted out something that was "part truth, part guess, and part utter tosh." (We've all been there)

6. Stuart, Chief Editor, Nature Chemistry. Stu dabbles in writing, mostly at The Sceptical Chymist and Chemical Connections. He serves as a bridge between referees, authors, Editors, and the public, while also taking a long view towards future development of the journal. He (correctly) opines that "sometimes the subtleties of chemistry are lost on non-chemists."

7. Dawn, Sustainable Technologies Assoc. Director, Dow. Dawn sent me her entry by email, so I'll post it here, as promised:

"I work for Dow Chemical in the department of Sustainable Technology.  Our goal is to help our scientists, developers and marketing community imbed sustainable chemistry and engineering at the earliest stage of technology development – a “get it best early on” mentality.  This is accomplished through meeting the needs of People (technology has to function well, meeting a consumer need), Profit (if it isn’t profitable, we won’t be in business for long), and Planet (minimizing the impacts).  Specifically we aim to

-          reduce hazard (product, process, use of our products),

-          improve energy footprint (energy efficiency in our plants; energy efficiency for our customers through the use of our products; diversified feedstocks; technology for renewable energy),

-          maximize atom economy through optimal yield, lowest auxiliary use (solvents, protecting groups, etc.), minimal waste, and even concepts like optimal functional unit efficiency (e.g., meets the performance need but maybe with double the lifetime, thereby maximizing every use of those atoms as compared to an incumbent technology),  

-          and holistic design – considering “cradle to cradle” concepts that explore the use of renewable and recycled raw materials, a sustainable supply chain, through customer use phase, and end-of-life scenarios.

My typical day involves elements of training, project consulting, reporting on sustainability metrics, tool development (like sustainability assessment tools for early-stage projects), and university sustainability workshops (we’d like everyone to learn these principles early in their undergraduate and graduate education!).

I have a Ph. D. in Organic Chemistry and was a post-doctoral fellow in Bio-organic Chemistry.  I have 22 years of industrial experience in a variety of leadership roles across many of Dow’s business and corporate research teams, as well as diverse geographical experience with global responsibilities, including assignments in Europe and Asia.  My experience includes businesses and technologies such as Dow AgroSciences, Corporate Research - New Products & Math Modeling, Dow Building Solutions, Specialty Films, Plastics, Asia-Pacific Corporate Research, Asia-Pacific Epoxy and Specialty Chemicals, and now Sustainable Technology. 

My most unique experience was being on assignment in Switzerland (the richest country in the world) and then to Shanghai, in a developing economy.  Quite a juxtaposition of experience!  In Shanghai I was part of the leadership team that established a world-class research capability.  Key contributions during this last assignment included business research responsibilities as well as establishing a solid foundation in Dow’s Environmental, Health & Safety culture and practices across our new research organization.  It was the most rewarding experience of my career.

I have a personal passion for sustainability and achieving scientific innovations that have a positive impact on the world – a passion that became a catalyst for change in several of the Dow businesses I’ve served."

SAO here again: Wow, guys! I can't believe I've just received seven entries on the first day! Keep 'em coming, and don't forget to use the hashtag #ChemCoach on Twitter.