fear

there is a point where the mind is still strong, but the body can no longer handle the pressure stacked from all sides. and that was the case yesterday, when i went to umass to do my final day of imaging but realized my fine motor skills wasn't capable enough of moving and imaging the plates. the reassurance from beatriz that the collecting/freezing of organoids officially happens later that day instead of saturday, or sunday, because of the rapid descend in sample size (final count: n=73) is too risky on a computational standpoint to keep the experiment going that boosts the pitching narrative from a biological standpoint (no functional readouts, only gene expression screening). i came back to campus at around 3, and my body could barely walk. i blocked my parents because my mom despised my months of contigency plan for when my body breaks down in the middle of the anabasis (LOA), and my dad agreeing but calling me "someone who tends to give up since high school."

i couldn't handle their voices anymore. i have to shut them down. and now save of william who couldn't really help with anything structural, dan being offline, and my roommates perhaps weirded out by the aftermath of the call i had with my parents where i emotionally smashed my dorm desk, i am really much alone. im truly alone.

on top of that, i have gotten much more clarity from beatriz:

1. graduation is non-negotiable because she believes customers won't care about her unless she has a PhD degree. i agree with that, but the current temporal constraints (speed of the growth of this nascent market driven by government incentives to popularize brain organoids in american biotech, and the existence of engram) as well as my own computational pace makes her statement factually holds lower priority. we are looking at her graduation around fall of 2027.
2. even if she graduates this year, the seemingly perfect cofounder candidate is in actuality, someone who is too strong willed on non-technical subjects, and favors only non-dilutive fundraising opportunities, still cares about the coauthorship, wants to be the CEO of a company that she verbally stated as a very low chance of conception, and in response she might just want to join the job market.

the vision path is misaligned no matter how much we want the company to operationally look like at its most mature state. she can't move fast enough, and too rigid in mindset. i can see how everything will fall apart if i continue to work with her. and she knows it, which is why she urges me to start my own thing without her, as a service. again, another misalignment. i don't want to run a service in front of CROs. i want to run a CRO in front of the entire brain aging biotech sector.

the two things i still need from her now, ig... is to maintain the current working relationship, for her to train me on sectioning and generate all the objectively quantifiable ground truth data to fit the final piece of the puzzle in my dataset so modeling can start, as well as any customer discovery information she is willing to share from iCorps, other than "companies don't care about specific protocols of culturing, they don't even know if they want to adopt organoids in the first place."

to lay things out more logically, ranked:

1. the three-way meeting later this month, mid-ground truth collection. she would naturally share. i need names, profiles, psychology, and objections from the potential customers.
2. sun directly. with or without indirect probing from beatriz. he is obligated to do so if he wants to be advisor.
3. my own research thru the much better ai research tools.
4. warm intros post-results and post-provisional IP. big tool bag to attract attention from authorities such as NIH or the like.

so what happens to the hunt? if that ideal, fantasized version of beatriz doesn't exist anymore? and in reality, has never existed in the first place? what is the fallback? how does the hunt continue? or do i need the hunt?

• if the hunt were to continue, i do have a lead in my head.
• if the hunt were to be dropped, then i hire after raising. not as good as a having someone complimentary as my second-hand man, but ppl who care more about salaries. this is still a viable option that lada and charlie took, but i bet the high-level decision making room is very empty.

so i have to optimize for the former. having the right cofounder is infinitely better than being alone on top. this is not just psychological. the psychological benefit for me personally is marginal once im in the biotech network. there are structural concerns if i were to continue this journey with my validated data and a less-than-half-time advisor:

1. the credential of a PhD degree to gain trust from customers, which neither beatriz or i have, and beatriz will only obtain it as early as later next year. too late compared to what this biotech sector niche is facing.
2. someone who is biologically more technical than me on a foundational level to shape the technicality of this company. that science lead is non-negotiable.

suzanne.

observations from last call w/ her:

• hedges on her own data, saying it's not validated enough. scientifically cautious, perhaps overly cautious.
• postdoc, and during her phd candidate time refused a startup opportunity because she wants to graduate first, but now she has.
• technical in the data-intersection of AI and biology. well-versed in foundational, molecular level of biology but also can be very fast learner since she's fluent in AI.
• interested in biomanufacturing, agents, and robotics.
• knows that deterministic AI is the only viable path for biomanufacturing, and that agentic implementations is only good for finding new alphas.
• not organoid native.

i nailed down a lot of things about her through that conversation alone, and logically deduced the lack of need to fill the gaps/weaknesses.

“In most cases, strengths and weaknesses are two sides of the same coin. A strength in one situation is a weakness in another, yet often the person can’t switch gears. It’s a very subtle thing to talk about strengths and weaknesses because almost always they’re the same thing.” — Steve Jobs

she is definitely technical but not confident unless there's strong data backing. operationally, that's also me. i haven't left this fucking college town because the result of the PoC hasn't been solidified yet. and i won't leave until that is done. i want perfection in the technical aspects of my work but i won't be perfect because i don't actually code. i use agents. on that level it's similar.

on the learning curve upstream and downstream of biomanufacturing, with enough passion on her end, sun's advise and his own expertise on his specific protocols and custom device, AI research + RAG tools, and foundational biological knowledge, and technicians to actually handle the problems, that gap is interestingly trivial.

• upstream: mostly sun (as advisor), reading and her own preexisting knowledge base
• downstream: i already know this. there are only a 3 possible things we do: functional readouts like MEA or calcium imaging, scRNA-seq from flow cytometry, and IHC for structural expression viability. after this it's just selling back the data the technicians have personally gathered. the dosage and whatever can be tested in a scaled (in terms of organoids) setting can be easily done, designed by both ends, a grew-more-native version of Suzanne, me (who will continue learning), and the customer. the drug doesn't have to change. that's the whole point. translatability.

look at me. gpt 5.2 + gemini 2.5 pro + sun + beatriz's knowledge is already making me worldclass in organoid biology + deterministic-AI-enabled QC compared to most college campuses and most biotech/pharma (will go more in-depth soon). with suzanne's rigor and the tools she can be enabled with, what's stopping her if she has the fire to learn? what's stopping her from becoming better at technical areas im good and bad at? the clashes won't be on vision (recall beatriz), but would be on the technical details (productive).

on the wet lab expertise that she lacks, her role of signficance will be linear to how much equity she will vest since the broad direction is automated biomanufacturing, whereas someone like beatriz (who only knows wet lab) will become diminishingly unimportant as more automation is implemented. invest in the future. today's gap is temporary, and is what we're trying to optimize against by building the opposite, in future.

and going back to convos with beatriz on her vague iCorps interview result summary. logically speaking, the ppl who are working with organoids would already have had their own biomanufacturing plant or have outsourced to an existing CRO; these ppl won't be the ideal customer. the ideal customer, per beatriz, is the ppl who have yet to adapt to organoids, which is most of biotech and pharma. in that case, im already worldclass but no one will listen to me since i don't have a phd degree. but someone who can be at the same level, if not more, of technicality like suzanne will have the credibility to face them. and no one faces them alone. if she lacks confidence (something i have discovered when she describes her own work), i should be there. the founder should always be there.

that is, if she has the gut to learn. if she wants to take that leap of faith supported by a sequentially achieved chain of evidence, from the market landscape, my potential startup credentials (thiel, z, etc), the PoC's result itself (which she won't be suspicious about the lack of functional assay-based ground truth since she isn't domain native but can judge from a computational standpoint), the non-risk of applying to sosv sf/ny, and the structural clarity and support from sosv sf/ny after being accepted.

so at the end of the day, everything comes back to one variable: gut and conviction under uncertainty.

what do i have to do right now:

1. get the LOA done for medical reasons (physical and mental health)
2. (parallel w/ 1.) sort out where i will live for until the end of april to sort out the logistics
3. sectioning starts tuesday (40ish blocks; 1 hr per block). get trained by beatriz on sectioning, and do the sectioning. this is the most labor intensive step of the entire PoC experiment. i need to be locked in, and be available all day. i cannot afford going to classes. the LOA is absolutely necessary (20 days min vs. 7 days max).
4. after sectioning, the three-way meeting with sun and beatriz. extract customer discovery info and listen to beatriz's immediate demands since we won't work after the PoC. don't agree to anything, bring all demand requests back to Letao.
5. once the ground truth data is all collected, the modeling blitzkrieg begins.
6. if the result is satisfactory: get the provisional IP started independently right away.
7. (parallel w/ 6.) call suzanne. bring her the evidence-based validation i have and gauge her reaction. if things don't go well, act accordingly. if she is willing to build with me side by side, she will talk to sun, and when the time is right, i fly to barcelona myself to meet her irl and finalize everything verbally.
8. (dependent on 7.) apply to sosv sf/ny, or else.

all in the meantime wait for z and thiel results.

fear is the mind killer. and I must not fear. fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. i will face my fear. i will permit it to pass over me and through me. and when it has gone past, i will turn the inner eye to see its path. where the fear has gone there will be nothing. only I will remain.