Steve Hsu: evaluation

Transcript context

…I had no idea. That's super interesting. So, you mentioned that you're accumulating data and improving your techniques over time, is there a first mover advantage to a genomic prediction company like this? Or is it whoever has the newest best algorithm for going through the biobank data? That's another super question. For the entrepreneurs in your audience, I would say in the short run, if you ask what the valuation of GPB should be? That's how the venture guys would want me to answer the question. There is a huge first mover advantage because they're important in the channel relationships between us and the clinics. Nobody will be able to get in there very easily when they come later because we're developing trust and an extensive track record with clinics worldwide—and we're well-known. So could 23andme or some company with a huge amount of data—if they were to get better AI/ML people working on this—blow us away a little bit and build better predictors because they have much more data than we do? Possibly, yes. Now, we have had core expertise in doing this work for years that we're just good at it. Even though we don't have as much data as 23andme, our predictors might still be better than theirs. I'm out there all the time, working with biobanks all around the world. I don't want to say all the names, but other countries are trying to get my hands on as much data as possible. But, there may not be a lasting advantage beyond the actual business channel connections to that particular market. It may not be a defensible, purely scientific moat around the company. We have patents on specific technologies about how to do genotyping or error correction on the embryo, DNA, and stuff like this. We do have patents on stuff like that. But this general idea of who will best predict human traits from DNA? It's unclear who's going to be the winner in that race. Maybe it'll be the Chinese government in 50 years? Who knows? Yeah, that's interesting. If you think about a company Google, theoretically, it's possible that you could come up with a better algorithm than PageRank and beat them. But it seems like the engineer at Google is going to come up with whatever edge case or whatever improvement is possible.…

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