#868: Tim’s Founder Kitchen — From Brainstorm to The President’s Office in Two Months (Featuring Jake Becraft, Strand Therapeutics)
Jake Becraft is the CEO and co-founder of Strand Therapeutics, a company building one of the most advanced programmable genetic medicine platforms in biotechnology. Under his leadership, Strand is redefining what RNA medicines can do by enabling cell-selective targeting and therapeutic payload delivery inside the body, unlocking a new class of precision genetic therapies. This episode is brought to you by: Helix Sleep premium mattresses: HelixSleep.com/Tim (20% off any purchase) Incogni, which automatically removes your personal data from the web, helping shield you from fraud, scams, and identity theft: Incogni.com/Tim (use code TIM at checkout and get 60% off an annual plan) Timestamps: [00:00:00] Start. [00:06:07] What Strand does. [00:08:19] The Boston dinner. [00:11:05] The image of a body riddled with cancer. [00:15:05] What stuck for the muggles in the pitch deck. [00:17:14] A good drug vs. a good product. [00:19:40] Tricking cancer into snitching on itself. [00:27:38] The abscopal effect. [00:34:04] Potency, specificity, and delivery. [00:35:46] First principles thinking. [00:36:38] The precipice of a revolution. [00:41:14] The thousand people in the room. [00:48:38] Psychedelic medicine as a cautionary tale. [00:51:17] What actually catches a policymaker’s attention. [00:53:42] Breakthrough vs. incremental. [00:54:55] What’s in it for the policymakers? [00:58:08] The 80/20 wish list. [01:01:31] Australia’s CTN system. [01:03:51] Sheep, psychedelics, and red-tape arbitrage. [01:05:22] China’s clinical-trial flywheel vs. slow-motion American loss. [01:06:53] The bicoastal biotech ethos. [01:08:10] Can the FDA actually pull this off? [01:12:12] The Sophie’s Choice of pharma development. [01:14:16] Lost arts of founder mode. [01:15:23] Rockets for tumors, T-cells, and beyond. [01:19:16] Viral in policy circles. [01:23:09] The Washington Post headline and the PickFu split test. [01:27:56] Solution-first storytelling. [01:33:54] RNA medicine and platform therapeutics. [01:39:17] Moderna’s 62 days. [01:40:33] Uber Eats and the de-risked launch. [01:44:17] CEO blockers. [01:45:52] Where’s biotech’s SpaceX moment? [01:46:53] Elon Musk betting black on the wheel. [01:51:55] AWS and the post-conviction / pre-consensus window. [01:58:47] COVID politicization. [01:59:46] Insulin, growth hormone, and the original platform story. [02:01:35] Biotech as pharma’s little brother. [02:03:29] More recent role models, Apple edition. [02:04:50] Art Levinson, Steve Jobs, and the biotech-tech crossover. [02:06:25] The iPhone as a delivery platform. [02:08:25] Spotify’s problem and the future of bespoke medicine. [02:10:07] Baby KJ and the limits of liver-only solutions. [02:11:19] Parting thoughts. * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.