Shahin Farshchi, partner at Lux Capital, joins us to talk about investing in the next generation of neural interfaces. Lux is currently investing out of a $1.5B fund, and its portfolio includes Anduril, Hugging Face, Zoox, and CTRL-Labs.

Shahin likes to say neural interfaces have been “five years away” for 20 years. But something has changed. Tune in to find out what.

In this episode, we discuss:

• How Shahin evaluates brain-computer interface companies
• His thesis behind investing in Flourish Labs and Unconventional
• Voice as the next major interface
• How he spots the next tech wave before it arrives

Credits:
Created by Greg Kubin and Matias Serebrinsky
Host: Matias and Greg
Produced by Nico V. Rey
Find us at businesstrip.fm and psymed.ventures
Follow us on Instagram and X!
Theme music by Dorian Love

Naren Tallapragada (co-founder of Tessel) joins to talk about the industry of modeling biology. While the field races to build virtual cell models, his team builds virtual tissue models, betting that predicting what an organ actually does matters more than predicting what genes a cell expresses. The goal: not just whether a drug works, but who it works for.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why 90% of drugs fail in clinical trials, and why neuro and Alzheimer's failure rates are even worse
• The multi-scale modeling problem: molecules, genes, cells, tissues, organs, and why picking the right level of resolution matters more than picking the "best" one
• The electron-and-lightbulb argument for why virtual cell models may be a beautiful solution to the wrong problem
• Organoids vs. animal models: where human cell models beat animals, and where both fail (like modeling behavior in mental health)
• Why Naren thinks defensibility in AI-driven biology comes from proprietary multi-organ data, not model architecture
• The case for precision medicine, and why it's been such a brutal business model to actually execute on
  
  

Credits:

Created by Greg Kubin and Matias Serebrinsky
Host: Matias and Greg
Produced by Nico V. Rey
Find us at businesstrip.fm and psymed.ventures
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter!
Theme music by Dorian Love
Additional Music: Distant Daze by Zack Frank

Mariëlle van Kooten (CEO and co-founder of Powerhouse Biology) joins to make the case that mitochondria are the best place to start engineering the human body. Her team builds virtual mitochondria models to predict how a fix will behave before it ever touches a patient. Marielle is passionate about treating disease and human enhancement.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Why mitochondria might be the most tractable place to start engineering human biology
• The difference between building a virtual mitochondria model and the industry-wide race to build a virtual cell
• Why a protein fix for one disease (say, Parkinson's-linked muscle weakness) could work across totally unrelated tissues
• The difference between Science vs. Engineering: why she left academia
• The case for human enhancement: longevity, resilience, and why the ethics conversation is stalled

Credits:

Created by Greg Kubin and Matias Serebrinsky
Host: Matias and Greg
Produced by Nico V. Rey
Find us at businesstrip.fm and psymed.ventures
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter!
Theme music by Dorian Love
Additional Music: Distant Daze by Zack Frank