Weekly Update 06.16 - 06.23
Goals achieved and new goals getting established - changing travel plans to come back sooner
The past two weeks have been a bit of a blur. I didn’t get a chance to post my last weekly update while running around, and I’m posting this one a bit delayed. I’ve been moving out of Agape, doing a weird art thing in the woods, running up to Edge in Healdsburg for a panel, hosting a biopunk hackathon, building out the lab space, trying to stay on top of client work, and maintaining beautiful deep relationships with wonderful people in my life. It feels like the main point of me putting together a BSL2 space is to try to clone myself so I can be doing many things at once. I’m really excited for upcoming travel! This weekend I’ll be in LA, then a few days in Sydney and on to Bali for Dinacon. After some discussion with friends I also changed my travel plans so I can be back in town sooner + get back to working.
What I'm doing:
Building the biotech community I wish I had when I started
Media → Events → House → Lab ☑️ → Fund → CROs → Clinics/Trials
I’m working to build a foundational system to re-do the way we go about approaching biotech projects/company building. The analogy I like is putting together my environment and framework before shipping code. There isn’t any current established system that I have access to that allows me to consistently and routinely build biotech projects. The lab has been at the core of all my plans. Now that the lab is mostly stable, I’m changing the focus over the next few months to begin chipping away at putting together a community house. It’s been a dream of mine to replicate what I have at Agape elsewhere and spread the goodness of community living in a repeatable model that supports everything else I’ve been doing. Also, when I return to SF mid-August, I’ll be looking to find a new house and I figure that will be the best time to really get established. I’m really trying to build this thing from the middle out.
North Star Metric/Goals:
Lab members (50 combined), +5 HTGAA, +5 interns
I hit my goal! We’ve got 50+ people signed up for lab space at Frontier Tower (I think the largest community there so far) and I’ve got a pretty solid team of folks over the summer helping run things in my absence.
Now that my main goal has been hit, I’m looking to shift my priorities to another KPI. Right now the interim KPI is words written, especially as I’m traveling. I’m trying to write a bit every day + take pictures/video to capture a bit of what’s going on during my trip. I’d love to figure out a way to have “prototypes shipped” or “things built” as another KPI + attempt to build a little something every day.
Words Written per Week (new goal for my journey) - ???
What I did last two weeks:
Cleaned/organized lab
Tore out door for BSL2 space
Podcast w/Brom + Sam
Went on 3 unexpected dates
Floor lead dinner x2
Weird Festival in the woods
Migrate Biopunk community to discord
Biopunk Hackathon
Taught Perfume 101, Chronotyping, Bacterial Painting, CRISPR class
Packed/cleaned at Agape
MK, Tessa Visited
Said bye to Zoe
Hired 5 interns
Going away party
Lesson(s) learned:
Need to create time/space for deep work + refocus on client work
Delegating Biopunk work
Moving is a full time job
This week's focus:
Biopunk
Biopunk follow-up email + next steps for the community
Biopunk lab onboarding Notion
Biopunk website edits
Install doorcode access
Extra
Basement party guide
Synbio skill tree (extra)
Biopunk House summer trial
Biopunk Fund deck draft
WORK
Biodexic
Replicate the awesome work David did but for proteomics
Cyanocapture
Customer pipeline
Thunderstone
Hiring
Rapture
Contract sent
EXTRA
Pigment roll-up write-up strategy
BraidingBio
Ask:
Come visit Frontier Tower
Help me figure out good methods of tracking/second brain systems
Intro me to people during my travels (starting June 28):
LA
Sydney
KL
Bali
Singapore
Bangkok
Angor Wat
Ho chi Minh
Taipei
SF
Offer:
Come co-work in the tower with the biopunk community on the 8th floor on Fridays
with love,
Elliot