Industrializing Biology: Meet LifeFoundry COO and Co-Founder, Sam Rad

In this episode of the Startup Tri-Valley Podcast, hosts Yolanda Fintschenko, executive director of Daybreak Labs and i-GATE Innovation Hub, home of the Startup Tri-Valley (STV) Initiative, and Lisa Adamos, Economic Development Manager for the City of Pleasanton,  sit down with Sam Rad, Co-Founder and COO of LifeFoundry, Inc. 

Sam, a chemical and biomolecular engineer with a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, shares his vision for transforming chemical production, discusses the role of AI in accelerating scientific breakthroughs, and reveals how LifeFoundry is tackling some of the biggest challenges in sustainable manufacturing today. 

Tune in or watch the link to YouTube to learn about the unique advantages of the Tri-Valley startup ecosystem.

Transcript

Startup Tri-Valley Podcast - Sam Rad

[00:00:00] Yolanda: This is the Startup Tri-Valley Podcast featuring in-depth conversations with the leaders who are making the Tri-Valley the go-to ecosystem for science-based startups. I'm Yolanda Fintschenko from Startup Tri-Valley. I'm Lisa Adamos with the City of Pleasanton. Welcome. We are here today with Sam Rad, COO of Life Foundry, a Tri-Valley company located here in Pleasanton.

Sam, welcome to the pod. 

[00:00:29] Sam: Thank you. Thank you for having me. 

[00:00:31] Yolanda: So, let's kick it off by maybe telling us a little bit about yourself and your company, who you are, what you do, what your company does. 

[00:00:40] Sam: So my name is Sam. I graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with my PhD in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. During my PhD, I was mainly focusing on developing a fully automated robotic platform and then an AI system that worked with it. So, my PhD thesis was on developing this platform where the robots would do the experiments, would give the data to the AI, and then the AI would decide what to do next.

So basically, fully automated, research scientists. We did this project and then published a paper, and then, we were approached by a few Fortune 500 companies at the time asking us, “This is very interesting, can we use this platform?” Then, that's when I told my co-founder, I think we have a product-market fit. So, we talked to a bunch of people who went through the Icorp program through NSF, went to a conference, and then talked to a lot of companies, and everyone was like, “This is very interesting. When can we start?” So, I think we got that initial customer interest and our prototype. With the publications, we took both of these to a few investors, and we raised the seed round and started a company in Champaign, Illinois. Then, we started working with the same Fortune 500 companies. Some startups work on a lot of different projects. 

But I think, it was a great community. We really liked it there. But, hiring people out of school was very easy. They were very talented engineers and biologists. But we needed people with some years of experience in automated strain engineering and that was hard to find in central Illinois. So, that was one of the reasons we decided to relocate the company, especially the biology side to California to the Bay Area, because most of the people in this space are in the Berkeley area. I think we made that move a few years ago. I think we've been doing a lot of different things. We started with the CRO model, a basic contract research organization. So, working with other people, filling a gap in their R&D pipeline. But now we are doing more of end-to-end development for companies that may not have their own strategy, synthetic biology capability. And then we build a strain for them and give them the molecule that they're interested in instead of just filling this certain gap. And recently, in January, we launched our devices business. I went to the Society of Lab Automation Screening conferences in San Diego. And then started some of our showcase some of the automation devices that we've built internally to serve the needs of our scientists. But then, we are making those available for the public. So, there are some of the smaller and simpler ones, but we'll bring more of those to the market throughout this year and hopefully next year.

[00:03:52] Yolanda: That's amazing. Thank you. So, if I understand correctly, Life Foundry uses AI and robotics to apply to a synthetic biology workflow to create a byproduct from that synthetic biology that your customers want? Or are you selling the actual engineered organisms?

[00:04:22] Sam: yes, we sell the engineered organisms. I think that's the main. Some of them don't have experience growing those cells. So, we engineer an organism, extract the molecule of interest, and then give it to them. So, I think maybe a good example, I think one of the canonical examples in our field is the production of the antimalarial drug artemisinin. So, it was extracted from a plant that was very rare and hard to grow. Then I think Gates foundation funded this group at UC Berkeley, to find all the genes that can make this molecule and then instead of putting all of them in yeast bakers, yeast that we use brewing beer or making bread, they moved all these genes. They transformed them in baker yeast, and they could make that molecule at very high levels. And, instead of waiting for years for that plant to grow, you can now just brew this yeast on large scale and then make a lot of that molecule at very low cost. And that helped to stabilize the supply and save a lot of lives throughout the world. I think it's one of the most inspiring examples, one of the things that really inspired us to do this.

So, this is basically what the end goal is. But, synthetic biology in general, is about using, applying engineering principles in biology, right? So, in engineering in biology, you would read a paper, come up with some ideas, and then take a lot of time designing. Everything was done in a very bespoke and artisan way, like maybe 10, 15 years ago. But we try to modularize everything. Standardize everything. Then automate it, right? So, imagine you’re Ford and you're trying to build a car, and every bolt and nut is custom-made for that particular car. It's going to be very expensive and it's going to be difficult to do, and it's just not going to be very scalable like biology was, maybe 10 years ago. But with this standardization, modularization, and automation, we are bringing biology to industrialized biology and making it easier to engineer.

And I think that's the premise of synthetic biology and what the field is trying to do. And it's been pretty successful. A lot of examples of successful companies and products that are in the market now. So, that's certainly very exciting.

[00:07:16] Yolanda: That's amazing. So, for our audience, if I understand correctly, what Life Foundry does is you have essentially taken synthetic biology, which is harnessing the mechanisms of a very robust cell, like yeast to produce things that might be otherwise hard to produce. So, taking something, for example, like a high-value pharmaceutical and being able to produce that in essentially the same way that you can make beer, and so at scale, and you've taken a further innovation, which is to make scalable the process of engineering those organisms themselves. So, you're applying, you're taking advantage of economies of scale with your innovation as sort of both pieces. 

[00:08:04] Sam: That's exactly right. We are really trying to standardize, modularize, and automate because once you standardize everything, then you can centralize it, right? And then, that's when you can scale up and automate the process and drive a lot of efficiency. So, we are working on more than 10 different projects in the company now: four different hosts, not just yeast, and all of them use a lot of similar infrastructure, like the samples from different groups, different projects are pulled together in a central place. And then, one person processes all those samples, and then the users can see the status of those samples.

And then, basically with this centralization and automation, we can drive a lot of efficiency. And that's been one of the key elements of our success. 

[00:09:04] Yolanda: That's amazing. So, you're truly industrializing biology. Sam: Yes, exactly. That's the goal. That's amazing.

[00:09:11] Lisa: Sam, what motivated you to work in this area, and how have you prepared for your current role that you're in? 

[00:09:18] Sam: I am originally from Iran. So, in the contrary to popular belief, people there idolize the US, the culture, the dynamism, and the entrepreneurial culture, too.

So, like when I was a kid, my dad gave me a Thomas Edison biography book that I read. That was very inspiring to me. I think, we take it for granted. But, maybe even a few hundred years ago in central Europe, you came up with an invention and your only choice was to just go and sell it to the king, just get some prize for what you'd done. But now, I think especially with the new entrepreneurial economy, you can. You don't need to ask permission for anything, right? You invent something and you go and commercialize it, and you can grow. You can create a potentially multi-billion dollar business out of that. I found that to be very inspiring. And one of the main reasons I came to the US was to pursue my dream. The first meeting I had with my advisor, before he became my advisor, he asked me, “Where do you see yourself in five and 10 years?”And I told him, “five years, I'm going to join a startup. In 10 years, I'm going to start my own startup.” And he chuckled a little bit, you know. I was like, that's a good goal to have, but you need to be realistic and think about the academic options, the industrial options. I think, I was determined to do this. And, once I saw the opportunity, we jumped on it and started the company. So, the reason I was excited about synthetic biology, I think initially was the environmental reasons and social reasons.

At the time I was very excited about biofuels. Everyone thought it was going to be the next big thing, and I was only applying for programs that offered a significant amount of research in that space. It was the first project I worked on was in the Energy Bioscience Institute that was funded by British bp. Basically between UC Berkeley and UIEC so that was how I got started working in this space. But then, I really saw how difficult it is to do engineer biology. 'cause all the tools were not available and everything was so artisan and the process was not very efficient.

So that's when I was like, if we wanna achieve what we want to achieve, we have to first fix the process, make it easier to engineer biology. And then once we do that, all of this other applications are going to be the byproducts of this process. 

[00:12:11] Yolanda: Well, that's exciting. So you really got to see through your graduate work.

Under the hood so to speak and discovered it's not an engine. Let's build an engine. 

[00:12:25] Sam: Yeah, exactly. And it's, if you really think about it, it feels like science fiction. I remember the first time I had the biochemical engineering course in my undergrad. My professor was telling us that, “this is how you cut this gene, and then you paste it somewhere else and then you can see this function in this microbe. And I'm like.” How can you see the gene? How can you cut it? So it is just really amazing if you think about it, the things that we don't see and we can't we know how exactly they work. We can use them to make it impact on these cells and on the world.

So it's really incredible. I think 

[00:13:05] Yolanda: that's amazing. 

[00:13:06] Lisa: So has anything surprised you most in the current role that you're in? 

[00:13:11] Sam:  I studied technology. You don't think about the commercial and then all the work than the technology that needs to be done to get a business off the ground. So that was really surprising to me. I didn't know what finance does, what HR does, what's the difference between sales and marketing, right? So I didn't know any of those. Initially, you think that technology is everything and I think that's necessary but not enough to get the business off the ground. so how important the business side of things are. How important is this, just to make sure, to resolve the conflict. How much of my time is spent on things other than core the technology?

I think fundraising, finance, filing patents, talking to the examiner, all those things, take a lot more time than I initially anticipated. But, that's the necessary nature of business. You must do all those things to get the technology to where you want to go.

And that was certainly very surprising to me. 

[00:14:32] Yolanda: Oh, that's amazing. So it sounds like Life Foundry is your first job from grad school? was it five years? 

Sam: It was, yeah. Yeah, exactly. 

Yolanda: That's inspiring. So, who or what has been the most helpful to you and for Life Foundry’s Growth? 

[00:14:53] Sam: I think, I would say our team. Our team was the biggest reason our company is successful. I take great pride in the team that we've built. Especially the early team that have been working with us for more than five, six, some seven years. I really try to help them grow in their career. I try to help them make sure they're happy and they're learning. Make sure they're learning every day, every year. And then in return they've been contributing a lot to the company too.

So we have people who've been with us since they were freshmen in college or sophomore in college. They were starting as an intern and now they're leading a team of five engineers, right? They've been working with us for a very long time. I think, that is very valuable to have this team that's so passionate excited about what they do and this mission. And just having this working relationship and making sure we can have retention within the company is also something I take pride in. So I think that the team would be especially those who've been, with us in ups and downs of business, during Covid. Everyone was struggling with different things. I think that’s the key to our success and that the people who've really helped us get where we are.

[00:16:42] Yolanda: That's amazing. So, it's the team. 

Sam: Yes, exactly. The team is everything. 

[00:16:48] Lisa: So, what about the Tri-Valley ecosystem has contributed to the success of Life Foundry? Or what are you trying to build within your company? 

[00:16:59] Sam: Yeah. So, when we came to the Bay Area, I was initially looking to basically cast a wide net to see where a good place for us to relocate. There were different considerations. I think most important, which was talents, right? Because that's, that was the main reason, we were looking to expand our team here. And most of the talent were in Berkeley, Emeryville area. But after I talked to a few people, I realized a lot of them don't actually live there.

They're in Walnut Creek, they're in San Ramon. They're all over the place. But they commute to Berkeley. And they kind of like the idea of not having to commute to with the traffic going to uc, Berkeley area. So, I think the talent was the number one consideration picking this space.

On the peninsula side, there are not as many people working on the hydro engineering and most of it was used to be in the Berkeley area. And initially we were looking for Inc for an incubator space and Daybreak Labs was not available yet, right?

So, we went to San Jose and I got in touch with Yolanda and Brian. I really felt the sense of community in Pleasanton even before coming here. I was invited to all the Tri-Valley events.

Tri-Valley Startup Events: Life Sciences was in October. 

[00:18:41] Yolanda: Yes. You were panelist for a Tri-Valley Life Sciences summit. That was amazing. And you did a great job. 

[00:18:47] Sam: before even coming to the Tri-Valley area. So I was really impressed with the sense of community and the most of the people that we are interviewing and ended up hiring, if I told them that we are going to be in San Jose, they would not have joined because they couldn't drive from that commute. They commute from Walnut Creek to San Jose or San Ramon to San Jose is brutal. And, I felt like in San Jose we were more like another startup in the sea of startups. That no one really paid attention to. But I feel the sense of community. So one of our devices broke last year and I emailed Yolanda and Meryem and I asked them, okay, can we drive to Daybreak Labs and use it? Do you have something like this? And they were very kind to help us or like some neighbor in our park in Call Center Parkway, they helped us with some other device and we helped them with some other things that they needed.

So I really enjoyed that sense of community too. And also, last but not least, the cost of renting a lab is significantly more affordable here than in south San Francisco or in Emeryville area. 

[00:20:10] Yolanda: That's amazing.

So talent, community and A price point. 

[00:20:17] Sam: Yes, and you know, it's just very accessible. You can commute to here from Sunnyvale, from the peninsula, from Berkeley, from Walnut Creek, from even Tracy. Yes. From all over the places.

It's remarkable. And I don't, I can't think of anywhere else in the Bay Area that you can commute to from so many different major cities. That's amazing. And I think that's a very unique 

[00:20:44] Yolanda: Wow. The centrality. 

[00:20:45] Sam: the central of the universe.

Exactly. 

[00:20:49] Lisa: Yeah. Only 30 minutes. Only 30 minutes to pretty much everything in the Bay Area. 

[00:20:54] Yolanda: That's true. Exactly. That's a really great point. 

[00:20:56] Sam: So that's also been very helpful for us in finding talent. And also, one other thing is just the safety and the community. I think a lot of them are employees who moved here from Illinois. The first thing they did when they parked their car they were to take their backpack from the car. In the call center. And I told them, you don't need to. It's very safe here. I mean, you can, you can bring it in, but you don't need to. And you know, I think they hear all the stories about San Francisco. I told them this is not downtown San Francisco. So, don't worry about it. 

[00:21:40] Yolanda: That's such a good point. And it. It really kind of ties into, uh, what do you love about living and working in the Tri-Valley? 

[00:21:48] Sam: 

Yes. All of this. I think that a lot of good food options, too, and downtown Pleasanton, a little more. I enjoy that we are is a seven-minute drive from downtown. And you have access to so many ice cream shops, restaurants.

When we were in San Jose, they were just a Chick-fil-A and the subway within seven minutes to drive. So this is really a step up and I really like the living experience and enjoy the area a lot.

[00:22:32] Yolanda: That's such a good point because I often forget because of the size, because the Tri-Valley is comprised of essentially a lot of small towns.  When you locate in one of those small towns, you're not very far from the downtown. So even if you're in the sort of industrially, easy to get to part from the freeway. You're, like seven minutes from downtown and you can still enjoy that, and your employees can enjoy that. Kind of amenity as well. 

[00:23:00] Sam: Absolutely. You know, when we were interviewing a few candidates in our San Jose side, we would have to take them for lunch, either drive 15, 20 minutes to go to the mall, to go to a restaurant or go to a diner like 10 minutes away and it just was not, was not great option. I didn't love either of those options. So I feel so much better here in Pleasanton.  just that things that you can do outside of work I think are a lot more and a lot better in high quality.

[00:23:33] Yolanda: Inaccessible sounds like inaccessible. Absolutely. That's so important. 

[00:23:40] Lisa: So, what opportunities do you see for your company as you grow in the next five years here in Pleasanton and the Tri-Valley? 

[00:23:48] Sam: Yeah. Um, so the opportunities, I think, I think the, um, um, well I think we, we talked about the advantages of the community, but about the opportunities.

I would say we have a lot of new business coming in. I think we have this device business that I'm pretty excited about. And I think there are a lot of talent in similar device companies. You know, there's Thermo Fisher, there are lot of different companies in this space, and I think that it will be a very a good community to find talent in any area that you want. So it's not just software engineers. You have hardware engineers, mechanical engineers, life science experts. a lot of hard tech talent that I think happens to be in the Tri-Valley area. Maybe some, a lot of it because of these companies or some of it because of the, the national labs. I think there is just a lot of talent. So I'm really excited as we grow the company, to have access to that community and a group of people that we can leverage as we grow the company.

But in terms of the customer opportunity, I think a lot of our customers are all over the country or all over the world, so probably not much of that is gonna come from Tri-Valley, but, just the abilities to grow and then all the different spaces that are available.

 I think when we were trying to look for our space, the lab space at smaller size that we were looking for was a little limited, but I think that when you get to a larger size, it's a lot more available. So that's also something I'm looking forward to, hopefully grow and outgrow our current business, our current space, um, in the next few years.

[00:26:00] Yolanda: That's great. How much have you grown since you got here? 

[00:26:04] Sam:  so when we got here, the team in in California was three. I think now we are around 15 employees. That's amazing. Five times. 

[00:26:14] Lisa: that’s great. I love to hear that. I mean, we've always said Pleasanton is a great place to start and grow your company.

So, and we've seen many examples of that with some of our businesses that we have here. So, that's great. 

[00:26:31] Yolanda: So, those are some amazing opportunities. What challenges do you see in the next five years as you grow here in the Tri-Valley? 

[00:26:39] Sam: I honestly don't think there are any. So there obviously all businesses have their own challenges.

But I don't think there are any challenges specific to the Tri Valley area. I think one small thing that I've noticed is, some of the younger, employees when they want to join us after right after college it almost feels like we have the opposite problem of we having champagne, that they think they're not as much nightlife going on.

It's like for more families and not for single, young professionals. That's something I've heard from a few people. It's not like they're the main sticking point, but I think that cohort of people, the only cohort that I've had a little bit of a pushback.

I think  Dublin is where a lot of them end up, and they seem to be generally happy, but I think that's the only small pushback that I've had.

In my experience working here for a year and a half

[00:28:06] Yolanda: but it does sound like the strength of the region is that we are a region, the region diversity. And that there's a lot, so that they found an option where they were satisfied lot. 

[00:28:17] Sam: exactly. Diversity options.

You know, there's some in Livermore that are more family oriented, but you know, Dublin is more urban, I think. And if you think about the city planning and development, I think that would be also something that maybe we can consider to just have, maybe a mixed development area with, work and more restaurants and more dense, walkable areas, but also some areas where the families with single family homes and whatnot. 

[00:28:53] Yolanda: Right. No, that's such a good point. We're working on it. We have many opportunities

[00:28:56] Lisa: especially with that at Stoneridge Shopping Center. I think there's a lot of opportunities in Pleasanton for that type of development.

Yeah. That's awesome. So are you hiring? And what do you look for in your hiring? 

[00:29:14] Sam: I think we've expanded a lot. We're going to pause for a little bit before we ramp up the hiring again. But I think when we do higher, obviously other than the skill, match, the start-up mentality I think is very important for all the hires. I think we don't have too many levels or many very defined roles. So like everyone will just do what we all think it's the best for the for the company.

So I think that mentality is very important. So, we've had people who say, okay, this is not in my job description, this is not in my role. I can't do this and that. And that usually, works very well in large companies. When you have different departments dedicated to different things, but a lot of things that you need to do as in a startup is what's necessary, what needs to be done. And I think that's one of the key things that we look for other than, of course the skill. And the, you know the experience of what the person can accomplish. 

[00:30:31] Yolanda: So a kind of a willingness to apply yourself to whatever task needs to be done.

[00:30:37] Sam: The can do attitude. This is something that we need to do and if I can do it, I will. That's amazing. And that's very important in a startup. In the early stages. 

[00:30:49] Yolanda: So, for those preparing, I mean, I think you’re a little bit answered this, some of our listeners are.

Maybe, um, you know, earlier, mid-career, maybe even late career, but some might even be students. And I'm just curious,  if for that variety of audience, if you could maybe talk about, for those preparing for their career in the life sciences, whether they are students. Still getting trained or maybe thinking of making a switch into life sciences, what advice would you give them? particular if they want to work in a company like yours that's leveraging both, AI, robotics and automation and synthetic biology. 

[00:31:34] Sam: Biology in used to be very artisan,and I don't want to use the word subjective, but it was a little subjective that people would have to read a lot of papers and then come up with different hypotheses and then try this or try that and then take a lot of time to do it. I think now, especially few more years from now, there's going to be a lot of focus on data and then on generating data and analyzing data. So, like data proficiency, I would say it’s going to be a lot more important. And, the ability to analyze large-scale data. Having that analytical thinking, to be able to do that, obviously, programming is going to be helpful, no matter which field you are in. I think it's just going to be important. Being able to understand it, the engineering principles, how to decompose a complex problem that you're given to smaller problems, and then how to tackle these problems. I think that these are going to be very important. The concept of obviously you need to know what is the central dogma biology or the origin, the general concepts are. But all those things you can learn on the job or, I mean, of course you, you learn a lot of it, at school too, right?. But, I don't think those are going to be what's going to differentiate them from others. I think just being able to have that analytical thinking and the data proficiency and not being overwhelmed with a lot of data and then be able to slice them and dice them. And then analyze them and make conclusions from that data. I think it's going to be a lot more important in the future. 

[00:33:38] Yolanda: So, so having that data proficiency and analytical skill skills, and I think. Buried underneath that, if I'm hearing you correctly, is understanding how to use all the tools and staying, keeping up with all the tools that you can use that's making that increasingly easier and easier.

[00:33:56] Sam: Yes, exactly. I think a lot of the the other concepts I think may, may or may not be as relevant in the future. So like, let's say there used to be this. Still is this field for protein engineering, let's say but a lot of new large language models are automating a lot of that.

So, you give, you train this, all the proteins that are been discovered, you know, by humans in the last a hundred years, you're trained, you give all the data to these large language models, and then they can tell you it's some level of data. If you give them enough data, they can tell you if this protein, predictive, this protein is going to be, what the performance of this protein is going to be. So this used to be a scientist really doing a lot of hypotheses: This is the bond, this, amino acid is going to bind with the add one, and then you maybe do some rational design to make those right point mutations. But now with machine learning, I think a lot of those are being automated. But, you know, just having that data proficiency and analytical thinking, I don't think it's ever going to be obsolete. I think it's always going to be necessary for developing biology and making new products. I think that's never going to go obsolete. 

[00:35:28] Yolanda: That's amazing. 

[00:35:31] Lisa: So do you have any words of wisdom for any founders that are listening in? 

[00:35:36] Sam For founders. I think there maybe two things. Two of my favorite quotes that really resonate with me, I think one is from Jeff Bezos.

I think he was giving a talk about, of course, he was talking about his book, trying to emphasize, the need for people using AWS instead of building their own servers. But I think I gave, an example. I gave the example a brewery in Germany that they were building a power plant to make power for their for their brewery. And then his point was, you have to focus on what makes your beer taste better and not building the power plant, right? So it's outsource everything. Focus on your core competency, focus on what makes your beer taste better. I think that's really been one of the main advice that I would say is important that you have to as startups, you don't have as many resources as very big companies do. And what you have that they don't have is the focus you have. You should have that maniacal focus on one thing and then execute as well as you can to do that one thing better than.

Everyone else. And that's, I think, going to be your differentiating factor. The other thing is from I think Paul Graham, one thing he said is you have to build something people love. So, no matter, as. Technologists, we always are very excited about the technology that we have but at the end of the day, if no one really is interested in that technology or it is not useful to them or in that version of it, if you make, maybe make a change or maybe change the product different way or target a different audience. Maybe they are interested. but you have to build something that is a small group of people really love. And then they start using it and they give you feedback and then you improve it, and then you expand from there. So I think that again goes back to that focus. So you have to really focus on one thing and one thing alone. And then after you know, you, you get to that point, and then you have to build something that small group of people actually really love.

And then from there you can expand and work on other things and target more people and expand the market from there. 

[00:38:07] Yolanda: Oh, that's great advice. Yeah. So what didn't we ask you  that you'd like to put out there for our audience? 

[00:38:18] Sam: I think we covered everything.

I think one thing I'd like to emphasize is that just I did it already enough that, this community that you guys have here is very special. I think, you know, that's one of the assets in the, in theTri-Valley area. It just, Tri-Valley has one of the, a very diverse workforce that it's nice. Theyre aee wineries, there are a lot of, experiences you can have here.There are mountains you can go and hike. The people here, I think are, I would say unusually, very high-skilled and affluent too. Because of that, that's just a very vibrant community for people to stay and build their businesses and grow their business too. So I think, now, we all shouldn't take that for granted. it's very unique across the whole country or more so across the world. making sure we connect all these people. I think it's going to be very important because, when people with different areas of expertise, connect with each other and learn from what they are doing. That's where, you know, the real innovation is born. And I think that's something I think, of course you are doing a great job Yolanda. But I think, this is something that makes this region special and we need to lean in even more in this area.

[00:40:05] Yolanda: I love that. I think this is a great place to end. So I second that. You are doing a lot, 

[00:40:11] Lisa: Yolanda, with Startup Tri-Valley and igate. I mean, you bring together the ecosystem. Right. So I mean, we're really appreciative to be able to partner with you.

[00:40:23] Yolanda:. Absolutely. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, and thank you very much, of course, to my fabulous co-hosts, Lisa Damos, and thank you so much Sam for bringing your company and becoming a part of our community. And thank you so much for your time today on the Pod. 

Thank you. Of course. 

[00:40:43] Sam: My pleasure. Thanks for building this community. Thank you.