From PhD to Public Company: Jason Kelly on Building Ginkgo and What Comes Next

Guest: Jason Kelly In this episode of Boba & Biotech, Armon sits down with Jason Kelly, co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, for a conversation about what it takes to build a biotech company from scratch when no one will fund you, why platform business models in biotech are harder than they look, and where he thinks the biggest opportunity in biotech history is hiding. They cover how Ginkgo got started on grants and stubbornness out of MIT, why Jason was deliberate about protecting voting control through IPO, the case for autonomous labs replacing manual bench science, and why longevity and wellness may dwarf everything the industry has built so far. Plus why biotech is still waiting for its YC moment — the infrastructure that would make it as easy for a PhD scientist to start a company as it is for a CS undergrad. Jason Kelly is co-founder and CEO of Ginkgo Bioworks, a publicly traded synthetic biology company he has led since founding it out of MIT in 2008. He holds a BS in chemical engineering and a PhD in bioengineering, both from MIT. Links Armon’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/armonsharei/   Jason’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrkelly2/  Credits Hosted by Armon Sharei, PhD Research by Julie Kim, MBA Produced by  David Woje, Woje Productions, Andressa Carroll, Portal Edited and mixed by David Woje of Pinwheel