Surreal week & amazing people - Part 4

Wednesday Nov 14th

   By the time I returned to Palo Alto Tuesday night, I got an email reminder from SynBioBeta (synthetic biology startup conference). The conference was just 20 minutes away from my home..that's not a problem.
The problem is..I got another email..reminding me that I have signed up (months ago)..for an investor pitch session.

Oh shit!
"I don't have any synthetic biology business to pitch," I told the organizer.
"That's ok..you can just pitch whatever idea you think interesting," he replied.

...so, I pitched.

"Alright, guys..I'm not gonna talk about businesses.. I'm gonna talk about market opportunity for you guys..".. and I talked about molecular cost&speed problems for molecular biologists in Thailand....and that these biologists could be (overlooked) early adopters of many technologies developed by new companies in that conference room..
(* you can read more elaborate version of this idea in my earlier posts.)

During the break, two guys came talk to me.
The first one was a founder of Desktop Genetic, a startup in London working on cheap DNA oligo printing..now interested in providing their DNA printers to lab in developing country.
The second one, even more interesting, is guy from Biocurious,
"I wanna move to Asia and start a private biohacker lab there," he told me.
He's probably around 40-50 year old, used to be a software developer. The company he founded, back in 1990s, was among the first that make video streamline possible on internet. He sold his company four years ago ..he didn't say for how much ..but apparently, he doesn't have to work anymore. He traveled around the world for three years..been to several southeast Asian countries like them a lot. He learned molecular biology for fun at Biocurious starting less than a year ago. He also told me about his spirulina project at Biocurious.
"..seems like a lot of interesting papers came out from Thailand," he mentioned.
"..oh yeah.. I knew these people.I gave a talk at their university last December." I said.
"Great! we should talk more; do you have a card?" he said.
  
..I handed him my business card. He looked at it and said,

"Oh, you're the bike rental guy from Endy lab! I called you couple weeks ago for bikes!"