genome-sequencing
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Tomohiro Takano
Tomohiro Takano is the co-founder and CEO of Genomelink (operated by AWAKENS, Inc.), a Berkeley-based consumer genomics company building what he calls a 'DNA App Store.' The platform lets people who have taken tests from services like 23andMe or AncestryDNA upload their raw DNA data to unlock ancestry breakdowns, ancient-DNA comparisons, hundreds of trait analyses, and DNA matching. Takano started the company in 2016 as a weekend project in Japan with co-founders he met at university, moved to the Bay Area with no visa and little funding, and won a spot at Berkeley SkyDeck one day before the team was set to fly home and shut down. He frames himself as a 'risk manager' rather than a risk taker, and credits a liberal arts education for teaching him to ask the right questions.
Jorge Conde
Jorge Conde is a General Partner on the Bio + Health team at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), where he invests at the intersection of biology, computer science, and engineering. Born in Miami to Cuban and Peruvian parents, Conde co-founded Knome — the first company to offer whole-genome sequencing directly to consumers — alongside Harvard geneticist George Church, then spent years as CSO, CFO, and CPO at Syros Pharmaceuticals before joining a16z in 2017. An MIT Technology Review Innovator Under 35 and Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, he is one of the most prominent voices arguing that the 21st century belongs to biology the way the 20th belonged to physics.