What a place to be.
San Francisco is so special, and I’m lucky to be here. Before I came to SF, I used to call it San Fran. I used to think “Silicon Valley” to be this deep, nebulous cyberpunk valley filled with crazy companies and just things happening. But that’s not what SF is. If you ask me now, “where’s Silicon Valley?” I’ll have you meet Jose, or Sam, maybe Martin, or Jun? Laura, maybe? Because the Valley isn’t a place. It’s the people. It’s the ideas; the things you don’t see because it’s about to be made. It’s all the things that could be in this world. It’s these peoples’ vision for the future, and the absurd amount of cash that flows around it. That’s the Valley, and that’s San Francisco.
There’s been lots of highs and lows over the past two years and I’ve learned so much more than I ever thought I would. In a lot of ways, I’m living the life I’ve always wanted to when I was a bored teenager. After +6yrs of being in awe of grad students, PIs, and researchers around me, I feel like I’m finally approaching the point where I can talk about science at an equal level. I’ve started to understand my personality and the type of people I gravitate towards, and I’ve started to hear my own thoughts on my work and life, and how to continuously stay in touch with them.
When I first moved to San Francisco…
When I first moved to San Francisco in October 2021, I still thought I was going to medical school. I wanted to help people, and I was convinced that an MD was the best way to do it. Sure, I didn’t like the idea of delayed gratification, but I was more or less bought into the whole “10+ yrs of medical training and 5-10 yrs of paying off debt” thing after watching hundreds of hours of Youtube videos and financially educating myself about how to pay off ~half a million dollars in debt. If I decided to go in a parallel universe, I probably I would’ve (finally) scored well on my MCAT, finished my first semester of medical school, and probably a little burnt out by now…
When I first moved to San Francisco, I still thought I was going to do a Fulbright. I spent hundreds of hours talking to professors at UW-Madison to write a beautiful proposal on a project to try to prevent non-communicable diseases in Mukono, Uganda through nutritional interventions through surveys and behavior-modifying sci-comm interventions. If I ended up making past semi-finalist in another parallel universe, I would’ve finished the Fulbright by now, and almost definitely would be living back with my parents right now. Maybe I would’ve landed somewhere else, but I certainly wouldn’t have the life that I have in SF today.
I think I decided I want to stay here, in biotech, around October 2022. I remember getting rejected at semi-finalist in late April, and then I started to think about what I wanted to do instead. But immediately after that, I went to ASGCT. The American Society of Gene and Cell Therapy, the conference that I’ve always heard about and wanted to go to when I was in school. This was my first time there, and in retrospect, it might’ve been a big reason why I decided to stay in the field.
Staying in the game
The whole company (~15ppl at the time) flew out, and it was amazing. We got a beautiful Airbnb in Virginia on a lake a few days before the conference in DC for our Company Retreat. We talked a lot, swam a lot, made a campfire… I’ve never experienced anything like it.
I knew that startups were special – I’ve been learning so much from the team over the past 6mo; hanging out after work, going to a bunch of cool events and meeting interesting people, all because of this group I joined. But I think the retreat, combined with the conference experience with the company, was the one that really started to make me want to stay.
At ASGCT, Chris introduced me to all his friends, and it was as if they instantly became my friends. We talked, drank, and talked some more. The density of quality scientists and personalities there… they were all so quick and sharp when it came to the science, but also incredibly kind, thoughtful, and fun to party with. The duality really took my by surprise.
It made me start to wonder: could I have both?
Another huge moment for me was meeting my mentors during that conference. I saw Kris, my most recent mentor at Wisconsin, and Sidi, my very first mentor who believed in me, too. They both said to me that I’m doing cool work, and I’ll never forget that feeling of validation.
After that, the summer flew by. We moved out of the incubator space, got our own place in the food desert of South San Francisco… it was all sort of a blur. I solo backpacked to Mexico for the first time too, came back and got Whooping Cough, gave it to a few people…
(Not my finest moments, but Mexico was a great adventure. But that’s for another time).
The company decided to move out of our tiny incubator space to South San Francisco using our Series A money. It was great to know that we can stop hot desking everyday, but it was also sad that we couldn’t eat Wooly Pig all the time anymore.
Friends
Around the same time, I started to recognize people at the community events I went to. I started to feel like I was part of a “network” for the first time, and it was a cool feeling. I realized I loved meeting new people. Hearing their personal stories, how they got here, and what they want to create and why. I drew a tremendous amount of inspiration from their infectious passion and dedication.
Around the same time, a group started to form around my house I was living in. And by the end of 2022, I was suddenly surrounded by 12-20 people that were always in and out of the house with varying levels of connection to me. It was a lot of fun, and it was refreshing to meet people around my age who just moved to the city and exploring the city. Many steps removed from the bay startup culture, the house became a good counterbalance to the accelerationist, “creator mode” bubble that I was dipping into as a Bay transplant.
Through 2022, I balanced my active deep dive into baby area biotech/startup culture for my professional life, with passive “hanging out” for my personal life. I watched a lot of Letterkenny, melting on the couch and talking with people at night. And in the beginning of 2023, I dedicated more time and effort into my personal relationships to search for deeper connections.
But I didn’t find it.
I was a part of a “friend group”, surrounded by over a dozen people that I could call “friends” for the first time in my life. But I was still alone. And the people that helped me understand why, funnily enough, was the builder/startup community.
Intentionality – deeper, faster
Authentic relating (AR) is a popular practice and sort of idea in the Bay area that uses small group sessions, games, and exercises to learn how to form deeper connections with people. I’ve attended around a dozen sessions over the past ~2yrs, and it seems like AR came about through realizing that more modern modes of social interactions in the 21st century (WFH, Facebook, TV, etc.) are less conducive for forming deep personal relationships with others.
Making friends is hard, and it only gets harder as you get older. It was one of the first words of wisdom I heard when I moved to SF, and I’m reminded of it every year. It’s hard to find people who are interested in you as much as you’re interested in them. How you made your college bff is an n=1, and there isn’t much pattern matching you can do. Because adulting is a whole different ball game.
When I felt like I wasn’t forming deep connections with specific people around me, thinking about my relationships in the framework of AR really helped me understand why. Opening up is hard, scary, and it requires you to take a risk in somebody to believe that they’ll accept you. I think it also takes a certain level of self-actualization to know enough about yourself. And just because you’re at a certain level now, doesn’t mean other people are.
To my surprise, I found myself connecting deeper and more easily with people in the (biotech) startup community. And, funny enough, there’s a lot of overlap in people who’re into AR and are also in startups (and some burners too).
On the most basic level, many of us shared the pain of solving difficult problems, the pay compared to tech, etc. But what stood out the most was their passion and curiosity for biology that permeated into their personalities, where the most brilliant people also happened to be the most authentic and curious about others.
Of course, I still had some great people around me outside of the startup world, and I could be biased with the people I’ve met. I’ve definitely met not-so-nice people in biotech too. And my experiences so far aren’t that unique in the grander scheme of adulting either. At the end, what makes for quality relationships are quality people, not the environment, job, or really anything else. In the past two years, despite all the growing I did in my professional life, I think the greatest lesson has been to realize great personal relationships and growth can happen anywhere, from anything, at any time.
In 2023, I felt like I started to understand how and where exactly to find those great people and how to grow those relationships. I also finally found a direction I felt like I wanted to start growing in myself.
What’s next?
I’m still thinking about what’s next. The past year or so, I’ve been grappling with the idea that I can have a career outside of a lab.
Turns out, I like growing people and helping them more than masterfully executing 40 maxi-preps in a day. Reflecting on my time at my startup so far, I realize what truly makes me happy isn’t necessarily a senior “Scientist” role. They seem to actually be:
- A “high-level goal” I believe in (ie. Drug discovery, curing disease, etc.)
- A “medium-level” project I like (ie. I’ve always wanted to study and cure heart disease)
- A “low-level” list of tasks or things I like to do (ie. complex surgeries, dosing, data analysis, collaborating & talking to scientists, etc.)
Along with:
- A great team with driven, competent peers + great managers.
- A community in that industry with people that I respect and enjoy being with.
- A flexible environment that’s focused on outcomes > hours that allows me to control my own schedule.
- Enough money to fulfill my basic needs.
This isn’t an exhaustive list and I’m realistically not going to find a job that fits all these criteria in one place. But it’s a framework I’ve started to use to think about what kind of impact I really want to how, and what my strengths and weaknesses are to make it possible.
I started looking around in ~Q4 2023. And this year, I’m going all in. Not sure where I’ll end up. Maybe SF, NY, or Mozambique. Nepal would be nice too… But that’s only if nothing else pans out.
I think I found my North Star. I want to help biotech founders build the future. The only question now is how……
This post was heavily inspired by a few great pieces (some below) and offline conversations:
Becoming a Magician – Autotranslucence
My thoughts on parenting and having an impactful career – Michelle Hutchinson
Stay in the Game – Drew Dickson
We reviewed over 60 studies about what makes for a dream job. Here’s what we found. – Benjamin Todd
Something random:
I’ve been reading a lot about building new mental health crisis services at https://psychcrisis.org/
Really interesting stuff like this post.
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