Ashwin Gopinath cites Jonas Salk, who developed the polio vaccine and refused to patent it, as his inspiration. Gopinath wants his work to have similar societal impact but acknowledges that as an entrepreneur, he needs to protect intellectual property and satisfy investors in ways Salk didn't.
Is there someone in your life or a historical event that got you into this game, either science or even as an entrepreneur?
This would not be like an inspiration, but one of the people that I am really sort of driving is some sense that, you know, someone like John Salk, like from the guy who basically invented the polio vaccines, like in some sense there is like something very beautiful in the amount of the work that he ended up doing. And also something that is even more beautiful, like, in the fact that he never patented it and he gave it out to the world in some sense. And even though I can't do that, so the entrepreneur side of me can't do that, like, I can't take that much of a risk.
Your investors may not be happy.
Yeah, I'll get in trouble.
But it's an awesome thing to say that, right? Like what he— yeah.
I mean, my desire is that some of the work that I do, at least one thing or two things that I do in my life, has that level of impact on a bunch of people.