June 2024 update

Summer in London + lab-grown cotton startup lessons

If you’re new here: sometimes I share updates on what I build. I’d been working on lab-grown cotton and got the 776 fellowship to take that further. I’m now pivoting into something new.

Done’s

1. Millions of tons of agave leaves are wasted each year in Mexico. I prototyped v1 of Tequila Clothes which I showed to Alexis Ohanian and folks from SquaredCircles (pics below). Will Pangaia pay for it though?

2. I wrote some biotech notes on things I find interesting. You can read them in English or Spanish on my Substack site: sofias.bio

3. I’ll be at Imperial College London + O'Reilly’s SciFoo event in July. I’d love to have tea and chat with the best biotech builders in the UK — Any friends there that come to mind? Anyone from StationB, Nanopore or Deepmind? :)

People I admire (Celine Halioua, Alexis Ohanian, Jo Zayner) and things I'm proud of (in-vitro cotton and agave fibers)

Thoughts

Since I incorporated a company, I’m entitled to call these “startup lessons”:

1. Care lots: my primary motivation to work on lab-grown cotton (thinking it’d be easier than healthcare) makes it clear I never actually cared. Great things take time so you gotta work on a problem that you truly care about.

2. Understand your client’s real pains and desires: after following your calling, you gotta figure out if others are willing to pay for your solution. Companies want sustainable cotton but are only willing to pay for organic cotton that satisfies regulations or polyester that can be cheaply lab-grown anywhere.

3. Vomit rainbows, not bullshit: labs and scientists are orders of magnitude more expensive than land and farmers, and sustainability is not a value proposition so LVMH won’t save you. Tech unicorns vomit rainbows (high value products), not bullshit (commodities).

4. Ideas matter: through the right resources, I was eventually able to build v1 of my idea in days not years. However, it was worthless because nobody wanted to buy it [2] and I didn’t even care about it [1]. After caring, planning and evolving ideas saves time and money. Building is not everything.

Since I’m a human, I’m entitled to call these “youngster lessons”:

1. Accept yourself. I don’t love math, I love consumer products; I’m a bad computer programmer, not that bad of a designer.

2. Don’t try to fit the stereotype. You can be a cracked technical person and dress well. Challenge yourself to be your best version in other ways too.

3. Don’t befriend people you don’t admire. Crush on someone you truly admire and you’ll be unstoppable.

4. Your intuition is always right, the world is wrong and coward. You know where you’re going, so trust yourself, ignore the world, and roll the dice.

My lab-grown cotton failure was one point within a whole match of building a biotech. I’m starting fresh and more confident than ever before that I can turn new dreams into a reality provided I keep working hard and don’t repeat past mistakes.

🧠