A founder pitching no-code genomic analysis tools gets grilled by investors on the science behind gene expression analysis. The exchange shows the tension between explaining technical details and keeping a pitch moving when judges want to dig deeper into the actual biology.
Chapters
We develop software for genomic analysis. Any scientist can run complex analyses without any coding. They can go from raw data to insight within a few minutes.
What is this chart showing? What problem are they solving?
This is showing gene expression analysis. So if you're looking at gene expression difference between 2 samples, it is showing which genes are going up on the right side and which genes are going down on the left side. During the pitch, things went in a very different direction, and I began to be concerned.
Explain it to someone who's a novice in that space. What is that used for?
Things do not go on script today as they did in the qualifier.
What does that mean?
For some reason, the judges really wanted to understand the exact figure, and they had even more questions. And it's like a whole scientific discussion, and we have like a few minutes of pitching, and I'm still on slide 2. So this is where the genes are going up, and this is where the genes are going down. It's a whole bunch of statistics in there.
And they're going to understand what genes going up and genes going down means? Yes, exactly. What does that mean?
Yeah, give us an application.
I love talking about this, but I need more time, and I want to pitch the startup, the business investment, not so much just the scientific parts.
I mean, is this helping us solve cancer? Is this helping— what is it?
This is fundamental to biology, so it applies in cancer, applies in everything else as well.
So I had to think very quickly on the feet, be respectful to their questions, but also move on. So that's what I tried to do.
