Almost every company has a mission statement, but not every company has a mission. For a startup, a mission is a perspective on how the world will look when they succeed. For example, Michael Karnjanaprakorn’s mission with Skillshare was to make lifelong learning and upskilling accessible to anyone—giving people the agency to craft a career that inspires them.
The idea germinated when Michael saw this problem up close: he had graduated from UVA, but he really wanted to continue to pursue new interests. He didn’t see a place where he could stretch, grow and practice lifelong learning in a deep way.
Michael was sure a solution was already out there. When it wasn’t, he realized that if he had this problem, surely others did, too. It was time for a solution—not just for him, but for everyone. That led to his founding of Skillshare.
Sarah McDevitt founded Core after suffering a debilitating panic attack. Over the next few months, she tried many things, and the only thing that worked was meditation. But none of the options in the market made it easy. With something that requires such a regular routine, the phone apps just weren’t cutting it. As a D-1 basketball player, she always loved coaching teens and so she decided that she would build a meditation product that the most difficult customers—teenage boys and girls—could use easily and effectively. This ended up becoming Core.
David Lu arrived at Berkeley for his undergrad and was astounded that every day, he could look up and see a clear blue sky. When he was growing up in Shanghai, this was rarely the case. As he continued his undergrad, he met fellow students, some from other parts of the world, who were also surprised at how the Bay Area seemed to have such great air (back then) compared to other places.
They realized that the first step in fixing a problem is to know there is a problem. They decided to build the most accurate sensor that could measure air quality. As they installed sensors, they learned that when traffic increased, the air quality got worse. David wanted to empower people around the world with data about their neighborhood, companies about the air their employees were breathing, and cities with information on how they could keep their citizens safe. From this, Clarity was born.
For all these entrepreneurs, a mission was born of a problem they had some connection with and cared deeply about—one they wanted to solve for themselves and also for others. Not every story is just like these, of course. But if you’re wondering where missions come from, look around you.
At Spero Ventures, we’re a single bottom line venture fund: we measure ourselves by our return to our LP.
At the same time, our investment thesis is that we invest in the things that make life worth living: well-being, work and purpose, and human connection. That means we invest in mission-driven founders.
The idea that mission and profit can be tightly bound together is unfamiliar to some people. They ask one of two questions:
How can you be a single bottom line investor and say you invest in mission-driven companies? You have to measure the “impact” the company is having with different impact metrics.
Oh, so you invest in mission-driven founders—that means you’re okay with sub-commercial returns, right?
AAAARGH!!
The company, by performing its core function, should take you towards your mission. And if you have a mission, we believe you will be substantially more successful than if you were not mission-driven.
The words “core function” are doing a lot of work here.
eBay’s core function is to connect buyers and sellers to execute a transaction. By performing their core function, they are fulfilling their mission of enabling economic opportunity around the world. Every transaction on eBay contributes to the mission of giving buyers and sellers agency to live the lives they want.
Tesla’s core function is to manufacture and sell electric vehicles. By performing their core function, they are fulfilling their mission of accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Every car they manufacture and sell is making the world better by being one more car that uses clean power.
WhatsApp — does this seem like an odd one? It’s not. By performing their core function, they are fulfilling their mission of letting people communicate anywhere in the world, without barriers. Every text, video, and phone call on WhatsApp, whether across ten thousand miles or ten miles, is democratizing access to human connection by making it free.
In contrast, a company like Toms Shoes might be making an impact, but their core function is to sell shoes. The fact that they happen to give to charity is a nice-to-have — it’s not part of their business model; it’s a marketing tactic. They are not a mission-driven company even if they use marketing language about “improving lives.”
Mission is not off to the side. It’s the very heart and soul of the company. It’s the product, it’s the marketing, it’s the company.
And because mission is core, the bottom line is the only thing you need to measure. Tesla doesn’t measure impact separately from its bottom line, because having more Teslas on the road is the impact. At a mission-driven company, when people buy and use your product, your bottom line is going to grow, and there’s a direct connection from mission to the bottom line.
At a true mission-driven company, the business model itself makes life worth living. And we believe those companies have the highest chance of success.
Here are three companies from our portfolio that exemplify this:
Skillshare’s core function is to allow teachers and learners to connect around their creative passions. By performing their core function, they fulfill their mission of inspiring and multiplying creative exploration that furthers expression, learning, and application.
Gencove’s core function is to extract valuable genetic information through low-pass sequencing. By performing their core function, they fulfill their mission of making whole genome sequencing a bedrock of decision making by making it accessible and accurate.
Core’s core function is to get people to stick with consistent meditation and mental health practices. By performing their core function, they fulfill their mission of cementing mental well-being as a pillar of our lives.
Mission can be very beneficial to your company:
Your mission is your north star for decision making. Any time there’s a big strategic question, asking yourself whether it takes you towards or away from your mission can help you answer it.
It attracts people who believe in the mission: whether it’s co-founders or employees, these are people who are also driven by wanting to see the world be different and to have a direct hand in making this company come to life. It has some side benefits where you don’t have to pay them big company salaries in order to attract them because they are passionate about what they are building and will be more than a cog in the wheel of a large enterprise.
Every startup is a rollercoaster. Regardless of how much we want to believe it’s all up and to the right, there will be moments of intense stress and existential angst. When everything is going to shit, you can hold on to your mission and know why you are doing this and use this to motivate yourself and everyone at the company.
Customers have started to care about which companies they patronize. If you think about your customers as co-creating the company with you, they will become part of your “cult”.
Board of directors: If you’ve had a choice on who funds you and who joins your board, then you could pick investors and directors who are aligned with your vision of where you want to go and what you want the company to become. A clear mission gives you a stronger way to unify them. This is important since they can have a big influence on the strategic choices you make.
At the same time, it’s important to know the place and role of mission in the company.
A great mission without a great business model means very little. Do you have an exceptional business model? At the end of the day, this is the most important aspect of any company. If your business model doesn’t work, the company is going to fail.
This means you shouldn’t put mission ahead of money. They walk hand in hand: If you don’t have a good business model and cannot generate money to survive, you will go out of business. If you go out of business, you won’t accomplish your mission. Game over.
I’ve seen some mission-driven founders treat making money like it’s a bad thing, or making the mission primary and delaying coming up with a revenue-generating model that is sustainable. Mission and business model have to be developed in concert. Fulfilling your core function should generate revenue and move you towards your mission.
In pursuit of that successful business model, you may need to redefine your mission—or achieve it in a creative way. “Purity” of the mission is a false god. You can keep your priorities intact while changing what you do about those priorities. Much like how a film is rewritten when it’s edited, the details of your mission will morph as you find the best way forward.
So ask yourself: Do I care enough about this mission to work hard for the next 10 years? Missions are motivating. Companies are slogs. There is no company that just grows “up and to the right.” Most are nauseating rollercoasters where the highs hopefully compensate for the lows.
But, if you have a mission, with a fantastic business model, where the core function of the company is going to make life worth living, then that is a jewel.
These days, practically anyone can start practically anything. If you have a sliver of pedigree1, like experience at a reputed company, it becomes even easier.
But as tech permeates everything, people are starting companies in industries they don’t know. In other words, they’re founding companies as outsiders, without strong founder-market fit.
And that’s fine. A fresh perspective is often a huge help. But many industries are complex. The incentive structures, local laws, and nuances about who wins and loses are not obvious from the outside, or even after several conversations with those in the industry. Today, there are over 1,000 seed funds—capital is flowing freely. You will get funded, but that doesn’t mean you’ll find product-market fit, and then get to scale. At any given time, there may be 5-10 companies tackling a similar problem. This is where a founder’s knowledge or experience in the industry is a real advantage.
As my colleague Jonathan Kroll put it:
“The bar has never been lower to build a product. 10 years ago, you’d need millions in investment to have some sort of rudimentary machine learning or computer vision capability. Now, this is all off-the-shelf.
This is amazing! Right?! Well yes, it is—but as a result, building a cheap product with amazing functionality is at everyone’s fingertips. So while amazing products with amazing features could have been the major source of differentiation in the past, today, that’s just not enough.”
Founder-market fit is an advantage because:
These founders get to asking the right questions quickly.
If they don’t know the answer, they know who to call in the industry to get the answer.
“Founders who know exactly what their market needs,” in terms of leverage to move the needle, “might meet those needs faster and in a more capital-efficient manner, therefore extending runway and giving themselves more time to experiment,” said my colleague Sara Eshelman.
They understand the incentive structures, and so know how to position their company in the most appropriate (read: unthreatening and helpful) manner to the relevant constituents.
They know local laws and where they can push and where they can’t.
Founder-market fit is not developed only by having worked in the industry. You can also be obsessed with a problem in that industry and immerse yourself in it before you find a solution that works.
One example of this is Filip Victor. Filip is the founder of our portfolio company Mati, which is focused on identity verification. He came to the US as a student and faced the challenges of an immigrant: not being able to get credit and not being able to verify his identity with many of the commercial entities that you need to live a life with agency. This led him to spend time learning about the space to try and solve the identity verification problem for people in the developing world.
Another example is David Zamir at Nana. During a tough moment in his life, he taught himself to repair appliances, going out to customers’ homes to fix their washing machines in order to have an income. This led him to create an appliance repair marketplace that trains technicians and enables them to craft their own livelihoods.
Founder-market fit is real when a founder knows enough of the market to see a real opportunity, while knowing how hard it’s going to be. At the same time, founders need to have a bit of rebellion, a bit of chuztpah, a bit of “fuck it, this may really work,” a bit of willingness to upset former colleagues, boldness, and the ability to envision how things could be. That’s when they can take the leap and build a company that could be amazing.
This is a problem and it is exclusionary, but it is also how the world currently works ↩
In my experience, the best leaders ask the questions that matter. And the questions that matter are the key to driving the organization forward.
As the founder or leader, you’re in a unique position with a wider, more all-encompassing perspective. You can see the vision of where you need to be in 3 years and in 5 years, the reality of your bank balance and fundraising, and the sense of the morale of the organization. You’re the only one with all this information floating in front of you as you chart a path forward.
What do you do with that?
The best leaders use their unique position not only to make objective observations on the state of the business, but to determine the right questions to ask the team. They use these questions to guide the organization towards the most important goals.
Imagine a product team that has spent the last few weeks designing a feature. They’re excited to present it to you. It’s a great feature — but based on where things stand, it’s not the highest priority. While you know that, you have to communicate it in a way that’s productive.
This is where you ask the questions that matter. By asking the right questions, you won’t just tell people what you see; you’ll help them see it, too. You’ll keep them on track while keeping them motivated.
A few of the questions that matter, in this example:
Is this the most important feature we need in our product to achieve our goals for the next 6 months?
And if not, why were we spending time on it?
Where was the gap in the communication that let these resources get get spent on this?
Is there a faster way to get this live (that may involve manual intervention) in order to get it out there?
Is there a more cost-efficient/scalable/robust solution?
Instead of command and control, questions help the team think for themselves. It’s the Socratic method for effective orgs. The caveat is that in an emergency or a time crunch, being directive is fine. It may be needed. But organizations that always rely on one person to make decisions end up paralyzed and ineffective.
I once worked with a senior leader who did exactly this. If someone came to her saying a deadline “could not” be met, she’d find the right people and ask the questions that mattered. By doing that, she’d help people figure out how to circumvent the bottleneck. She ensured that the things that moved the company forward, moved forward. It was amazing to see how “impossible” things, once she’d pinpointed the right questions, got done.
The same is true for investors. I find the best investors ask founders questions that make them think about the world differently, change the lens, expand the set of options in front of them with an interesting re-frame.
Asking the right questions indicates a level of thought, knowledge, and facility with the world you are dealing with. A leader asking the right questions can help an organization come up with creative solutions, hit their goals, expand their view of the world, grow to become more self-sufficient, and by doing so, move the organization toward that long-term vision.
On the set of “Waking Jed”, directing Jessica Chastain. Photo Credit: Anna Kooris
One of my early lessons in screenwriting was to focus on the character—motivations, personality, drives—and not external characteristics. It’s tempting to specify that the leading lady is blonde, petite, or whatever. And it’s okay to envision the character while writing, but we’re taught to avoid specifying detailed external appearance in casting.
The reason is that sometimes, the best casting decision is the one that’s least expected. You might have an image in your head of the character, but the best actor—the person who is most convincing and does an incredible job—might look very different from your mental image. Let’s say your character is written as a seductress, but the best actor for that role could be more of a plain Jane. That adds a lot to the nuance and depth to the story. A more regular-looking person being a seductress is so much more interesting than the hottest person on earth being a seductress. The film Snowpiercer was written for a mild-mannered man in a suit, but Tilda Swinton rocked the role.
During casting sessions, screenwriters and directors need to learn to set aside their mental picture, look at the actors in front of them, and reimagine the story with each person auditioning. That’s the way to cast the best actors.
Similarly, investors sometimes have a mental picture of who will be a good entrepreneur. It’s not based on looks (one hopes), but on the profile — the experiences a person “should” have had to be a great entrepreneur. VCs can sometimes be biased toward someone who’s worked at a hot company that went public, or is an engineer who can build it all, or a name-dropper who seems very connected in the ecosystem.
If investors carry around these biases in our heads, we will miss the best people. Like great actors, great entrepreneurs can come in all shapes and sizes, and from all backgrounds, all levels of work experience, ages, nationalities, and genders.
When casting an actor, the most important things to look for include:
Ability to live the character. Do you believe the actor is the character
Willingness to take direction. A director should never tell an actor “how” to play the scene, but the director can and should give her guidance on the mood of the scene, how the audience should feel, or the character’s motivation for a certain action. And the actor should be able to take that input and give the director a range of options.
I remember when I had the chance to direct Jessica Chastain and James Franco. They gave me such a spectacular performance on the first take and then turned around, asked how it was, and whether I wanted to see it another way. My jaw was on the floor — I was blown away by their talent and their humility in asking for input from a student director.
Ability to go with the flow. Film production (especially in the indie world) needs to be flexible. Sometimes, a much-desired location might suddenly become available (for free!), and the crew might have to shoot there tomorrow instead of three weeks from now. This means the actor has to be ready for scene 56 instead of scene 18.
Many of those same characteristics apply to ideal founders:
Ability to fully inhabit the role of the CEO. This is about vision, tactical capability, ability to hire, and the ability to sell their vision and themselves.
Willingness to take input. An investor should never tell a CEO how to do their job, but a big part of the investor’s role is to see around corners, anticipate challenges based on their experience, and give the CEO input and feedback.
Ability to go with the flow. Startups need to be flexible. Sometimes, a new competitor might emerge, you might lose a key person on your team, a pandemic might unexpectedly sweep the globe. The best CEOs are those who can adapt and find a way to thrive in the new world.
Just like the success of a film depends on casting the person who is the best actor, the success of an investment depends on casting the best founder. It requires putting aside the mental preconceptions and focusing on the person in the room (or on Zoom). Despite her youth, can she be an amazing CEO? What gives you that confidence? Her knowledge of the space? Ability to be compelling? Authenticity?
The best casting decisions happen when we are open to allowing incredible actors to show us how much better the character can be. In the same way, I try to approach every meeting with a founder with a willingness to be blown away by their vision of the world.
It was the summer of 2012, and most of the class was on draft 63 of their soon-to-be perfect first feature script. But before that, we each planned to submit draft 79 to all the prestigious film labs. There, we would get input from auteurs we admired. Then, we’d make the perfect film, it would open to acclaim at the perfect festival, and get acquired and released nationwide. That was the plan.
That same summer, Charles and Sarah-Violet (SV) had a very different plan. Instead of perfection, they decided to create immediately. They cranked out a feature script. They each borrowed $40K through student loans. Knowing they were on a tight budget, they wrote about a world they knew (deep Brooklyn), with only a small handful of locations (all in NY), and very few characters. They didn’t submit the script to any labs. They didn’t apply for any grants. They did not wait.
They planned the shoot. They cast fantastic actors, some of whom they’d known for years. One of our classmates was the cinematographer.
They shot their feature. They edited their feature.
They did it all on a total of $110K. Tiny, even by indie standards.
One year later, they submitted it to festivals. The movie, FortTilden, premiered at SXSW. It won SXSW. And that set SV and Charles on a different trajectory. They were writers on the Netflix show Wet Hot American Summer and now have their own, very successful show on TBS, Search Party.
I share this story to share the power of ignoring gatekeepers. There are a few big steps in making a feature film: write a script, prep and plan the shoot, shoot, edit, release. Every step depends on funding. You could wait for funding at each stage—basically asking for permission from someone else to make your film. Or, you can do what SV and Charles did — make the best movie within the constraint they faced and the funds they were able to access. No waiting, no permission needed.
Don’t get me wrong: this is definitely not an easy or guaranteed path. I spoke with SV recently about her story, and she said, “(Taking out those loans) was still a huge insane risk I wouldn’t exactly recommend for everyone. But it felt right. So I’m always very careful to say, ‘Look, this is how we did it, and it worked out for us. I have some success but I also still have student debt.’ That said, I do NOT regret it. Not everyone would be comfortable with the position I put myself in, but it was right for me. I had a lot of clarity in the process and risking the money didn’t scare me. Waiting years and years to find funding or someone to approve of my voice was a much scarier fate.”
If you follow the SV & Charles model, you will have a real, live product. A product which people can see and enjoy. A product that people can evaluate and say “hey, they won SXSW on a tiny budget.”
Given the choice between being constrained, but still making something, versus waiting for the “ideal” situation, what would you pick? While most of the class was dreaming of the perfect first feature, SV and Charles made their first feature. That was enough to launch them into a world that is very hard to break into.
Breaking into tech is easier because angels and early funders (the gatekeepers) are willing to fund first-time founders. But it’s not always easy to raise your angel or pre-seed round.
Look at the funds and skills that you have. Decide how much risk you want to take — each person has their own comfort level and you should be the one that decides what is best for you. And then, design and build something using your skills and your budget. If you build something people love, you will have a little success. And that little success can propel you onto your next opportunity. And then onto the next opportunity. And each project or startup could get better. The gatekeepers will then come to you (and I say that as a venture investor).
In my film school class, every single person had ambition, most had a great idea. But SV and Charles just did it. And they went from strength to strength. You can, too.
All you can do right now is focus on the things you can control.
Most of the world is in lock down, which is crucial to keep vulnerable people safe. Anxiety is through the roof. The natural state is to allow the “issue” to take up 95% of your brain and to fully embrace a state of panic. I’ve definitely had moments of this in the past few days.
But, I’ve had to reel myself back and think about the other times I’ve dealt with high levels of anxiety — 9/11, parental illness and loss, a cancer diagnosis. The key, each time, to my keeping my sanity has been to focus a majority of my brain on the things I can control.
To do that, I structure the shit out of it. Our work lives and our home lives have a structure, rhythm, and flow. I am trying to continue that while being trapped in one location.
Spero Ventures has been WFH since March 3rd. We cancelled an event that was scheduled for that day and encouraged people to stay safe.
While we are working from home and all of our “meetings” are on video, everything else is the same.
We are still investing. We closed on an investment today.
We are still looking for new investments. We are meeting founders on Zoom.
We are still doing regular calls with our portfolio and focusing on how to get through this time.
We are even doing our events. They just happen to be on Zoom. Later this week, we will announce a Zoom call for anyone who is interested in or building a community around our Product-Led Community thesis. Follow me on Twitter to hear about the announcement.
Personally, I am:
Keeping to my regular working schedule. Doing all meetings at my desk at home instead of my desk at work or at founder offices.
Making sure the kids have structure for their online learning — no PJs all day!
Making sure I meditate. I’ve been using Core several times a day – here are the results of my mediation from this morning
Doing PT for my knee (ski accident, ugh)
Working on things that get me into the flow state – this is awesome because the anxiety is not front and center when this happens.
One upside to having four people locked in the house is that I don’t have to uber my kids anywhere. That is free time that I can use to re-engage with things that give me joy.
My plan is to upgrade the internals of my old (2008) Mac Pro, set up a central photo database, and start editing again. I’m going to try to get Final Cut Pro X up and running and recut a film I made in 2012 that may be festival worthy.
Even writing this made me realize there is a lot that I can control. My hope is that focusing on this gets me through the next few weeks and months.
I will leave you with this perspective-setting paragraph from Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built in Hell:
In some of the disasters of the 20th century—the big northeastern blackouts in 1965 and 2003, the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area, 2005’s Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast—the loss of electrical power meant that the light pollution blotting out the night sky vanished. In these disaster-struck cities, people suddenly found themselves under the canopy of stars still visible in small and remote places. On the warm night of August 15, 2003, the Milky Way could be seen in New York City, a heavenly realm long lost to view until the blackout that hit the northeast late that afternoon. You can think of the current social order as something akin to this artificial light: another kind of power that fails in disaster. In its place appears a reversion to improvised, collaborative, cooperative and local society. However beautiful the stars of a suddenly visible night sky, few nowadays could find their way by them, but the constellations of solidarity, altruism and improvisation are within most of us and reappear at these times. People know what to do in a disaster. The loss of power, the disaster in the modern sense, is an affliction, but the reappearance of these old heavens is its opposite. This is the paradise entered through hell.
My film school classmate Heather shared this video of Henry Thomas’ audition for E.T. Take a look.
What stands out are the choices he made. Before becoming an investor, I spent some years in film. I’ve auditioned children for roles and most of them make the obvious choice – screaming, shouting, being loud. That is likely what most of the kids who auditioned for this role did, too. “NOOOO!!! You can’t take him!!” etc.
But what Henry Thomas did was so unexpected. With such little information, he decided to very quietly cry. He made the creature his friend, he asked how the agent even knows all this. He decided to be extremely vulnerable. These are the choices that got him hired.
I’ve often said that there are a ton of similarities between tech and film1. This is one small example – when you are interviewing candidates, a majority will pick the obvious answers. That’s fine. They could be journeymen in the company. But when there is a candidate who makes an entirely non-obvious choice, something that makes you sit back and think in a new and different way, those are the candidates who can change the trajectory of the company. Hire them.
Genomics is on the verge of enabling a torrent of data-driven invention, personalization and decision-making. Applications will extend across all forms of life?—?from humans to animals to plants to microbes.
In healthcare, genomics could pervade nearly every aspect of patient care, from prevention strategies to decisions about treatments. It also will provide the basis for a new generation of targeted drugs and therapies that can extend and improve the quality of life for billions of people. In agriculture, genomics will optimize plant and animal productivity while aiding in disease resistance and food safety/traceability. Genomics will also play a role in animal conservation, environmental monitoring, and public health and safety.
All these new opportunities will lead to the creation of new markets, products and services, requiring new tools and platforms.
At Spero Ventures, we invest in technologies that make life worth living. We believe genomics will be foundational to advancing the health and well-being of humanity and the planet. It will inform decision-making and touch lives in ways we cannot yet imagine and may not even see. And so it gives us great pleasure to announce our investment in Gencove.
Gencove, led by co-founders Joe Pickrell and Tomaz Berisa, is developing and commercializing a software platform to support low-pass whole genome sequencing. Low-pass sequencing sequences the whole genome at low depth (0.4–4x) and uses imputation algorithms to fill in missing data. The platform empowers decision-makers across consumer, clinical, research, and agricultural fields with easy and affordable access to rich genomic data and insights.
Whole genome sequencing is the most expensive form of sequencing and the most exhaustive. It maps all three billion base pairs within a (human) genome, providing a massive volume of data for analysis. It serves as the foundation for generating new knowledge of how and why living beings develop. And it is becoming the gold standard for discovering new genetic variants and new relationships between genotypes and phenotypes.
The cost of whole genome sequencing has declined dramatically since the early days of the Human Genome Project, famously outpacing Moore’s law. Reductions originally owed to the introduction of Next Generation Sequencing1, followed by hardware improvements, and more recently software that shifts cost and computational burden to later stage analysis2. Despite these reductions, the $500–1000 price point (and even the widely-touted yet still aspirational $100 price point) for whole genome sequencing remains out of reach for a wide range of applications. Without an affordable alternative, these applications will either fail to be commercialized, remain niche and unaffordable for most, or rely on the limited subset of data offered by less expensive DNA microarrays3 (which typically cover 0.03% of the genome).
Low-pass sequencing (LPS) is this affordable, data rich alternative. And Gencove is making LPS available to customers at price points beginning at $50 per sequence?—?on par with microarrays. In addition to offering comprehensive coverage, LPS outperforms microarrays in detecting both common and rare genetic variation. LPS does not require a priori knowledge of the genome making it suitable for new variant discovery and free from the bias inherent in microarrays (which are widely seen as unsuitable for non-Caucasian/European populations not well covered by reference databases).
Gencove’s customers are integrating low-pass sequence data into personalized consumer product offerings, new research modalities, novel diagnostics, plant/animal breeding programs, and more.
We are excited partner with Gencove in its mission to bring affordable genomic insights to customers and industries that have never before been able to affordably integrate them at scale?—?potentially unlocking discoveries and innovations we have yet to imagine.
Next Generation (or High-Throughput) Sequencing became the most widely used technique in the early-2000s due to its ability to handle large-scale, automated genome analysis. ↩
Including genome assembly, variant calling, quality control, etc. ↩
Microarrays examine a predetermined set of sites on the genome from which one can infer ancestry, genetic relationships, and some disease risks. ↩
All of these headlines are troubling for various reasons. But they aren’t reasons to reconsider investment in science and technology. I think the opposite is true. We need to support entrepreneurs and technologists who want to use technology to benefit humanity at scale.
Just like nuclear technology can be used to light up a city or annihilate a country, many things have the potential to be used to create or destroy. Yes, genomics, outside the bounds of agreed-upon ethics, might be abused to create designer babies. At the same time, millions of lives could be saved when clinicians are able to harness genomics for preventive and personalized medicine. Yes, artificial intelligence will lead to some job displacement; but it can also assist robots in taking on dangerous tasks, as well as help us understand and solve complex problems such as climate change and patterns of infectious disease. And when someone wants to marry a virtual being, we should see it as one more call to solve the global loneliness epidemic.
About this time last year, my partners and I were thinking about what kind of fund we wanted to bring into the world and the types of businesses we wanted to invest in. As part of the process, we thought a lot about what the future might look like.
After much discussion, we came to the conclusion that regardless of what it looks like, the fundamentals are likely to stay the same. The things that matter most to us today will continue to be the things that matter most to us in the future. They are:
Well-being – health, the environment and the food we eat
Work and a sense of purpose
Human connection
These are the things that make life worth living.
We founded Spero Ventures to partner with revolutionary entrepreneurs who drive progress by building successful companies that both scale and inspire…
…like Tim at Roam Robotics, which makes a flexible, affordable exoskeleton that helps people in sports, life, rehabilitation and work; Ivonna and Gabby at Fathom.ai whose mission is to support every athlete to perform at their full potential; Michael and Matt at Skillshare, which aims to turn the new economy into an open meritocracy by making it possible for people to gain the skills they need; Porter and Ryan at Jopwell, which empowers underrepresented minority candidates to advance their careers; Anthony at SafeTraces, which helps ensure the safety and traceability of our food supply; or Grant at Droneseed, which uses drones to make reforestation safe, efficient and scalable.
We help companies scale their products and businesses to serve billions of customers?—?we’ve done it as operators and product leaders at startups and multi-billion-dollar publicly-traded companies, and now as board members.
If you’re building a company that aims to make an impact on the word at scale, please reach out to us at info@spero.vc.
In the past couple of months, we’ve seen some dizzying headlines: “