Mar 18

Mar 18 Hyasynth: A Founder’s Journey from iGEM to Start-up

by Kevin Chen

Imagine if every semester was an iGEM project… This is a dream for many of you, or maybe you’re still recovering from last year’s competition. My time as a student in iGEM in 2011 and 2012 were the most fun, productive and inspirational times in my education, which I’ve carried forward in my work and career choices.

This post is for iGEM team members, reflecting on their past year. It’s also for new iGEM’ers or new instructors who are thinking about getting involved, that want to know more about the experience of iGEM. This post could also be for other entrepreneurs or investors who are new to synbio or curious to learn about iGEM.

My story:
I’ve been a long-standing fan and participant at iGEM. I was a student on the Queens_Canada team in 2011 and 2012 and then I’ve been judging since 2014. I also joined the Human Practices Committee in 2018.

Kevin Chen was also asked to hand out the 2016 iGEMers Prize

Hyasynth was founded in 2014 with a set of cofounders who had all participated in iGEM before. Our idea didn’t come from an iGEM project, but our first year of starting up looked a lot like an iGEM project. In the spring, we brainstormed and came up with several different ideas. Throughout the summer we participated in the RebelBio accelerator program and spent as much time as possible getting our first data and validating our ideas with investors and customers. And, in the fall, we presented our work at Demo Days in Dublin and San Francisco. (all with very limited budget)

Our idea was to produce cannabinoids by engineering a yeast with the enzymes for cannabinoid biosynthesis. At that time, the cannabinoid industry was just getting started as Canada had begun to allow for corporations to produce and sell medical Cannabis. Since then, a lot has changed but everything is trending towards further growth of the cannabinoid industry in pharmaceuticals and in consumer products. Our collection of “biobricks” are focused on engineering yeast for the production of various cannabinoids (THC, CBD, CBG and lots more). Some of our best work has been related to human practices, where we constantly communicate with regulators to keep them up to date on our work, and help them build regulations for the Cannabis industry. By the fall of 2014, we had made our own “Gold medal criteria” and demonstrated enough success in our technology and human practices to convince our first set of investors to fund us.

Since then, we’ve raised a few more rounds of funding to bring us to a total of 12M$ raised and built our team up to close to 30 people. We’ve added strategic partners to our board, and advisors who lead in our technology and our industry. Every three months have been like a mini-iGEM project, where we set our own ambitious targets and strive to achieve them. We work as a team to succeed, manage our budget and present our work to each other regularly. We’re well on our way to a huge success for our industry. You can read more about our story on the Hyasynth blog.

At Hyasynth, we’ve hired people coming from the following iGEM teams (so far): Queens_Canada, McGillU, Concordia, UANL, UBC and UAlberta.

I’ll close off this blog post with a few things that I’ve noticed since going from iGEM to startup:

iGEM is a gateway to real-world experience. iGEM gives you a reason and motivation to spend time with industry leaders, government, and other key people that can help you in your future career and projects. It also gives them a good reason to want to spend some time with you.
iGEM is great for testing your ideas. Unlike in the “real-world” your iGEM ideas don’t have to make money or have some kind justifiable impact on science. You have the freedom to be creative and explore something that might not work. I always encourage more creativity in iGEM.
iGEM is great for making mistakes and getting feedback. Throughout your iGEM work, you’ll have feedback from your peers and at iGEM you get feedback from judges from all kinds of backgrounds and around the world. My first few presentations of my company were built on things I learned from my iGEM presentation.
iGEM is great for building the skills you need to communicate effectively. You’ve made a website, a presentation and a poster that are for an international audience from all kinds of backgrounds.
iGEM is great for building teamwork experience. You get to learn to manage yourself and your team, and work together to solve problems, find equipment, find funding and build collaborations. How you divide up tasks, and what challenges you overcome here are important lessons to keep with you for the future.

iGEM keeps getting bigger. While it’s a great opportunity to see a lot of different kinds of academic work and do research. It’s getting better every year for building connections between entrepreneurs, companies and investors. iGEM has been around long enough now that many of us are the ones building companies, running labs, and leading biotechnology industry. So, while you’re striving to get your Gold medals and get on that podium, don’t forget to make lots of friends and keep building all the valuable skills you’ve gained after iGEM.

To follow our story and look out for job postings, you can keep an eye out on our website and newsletter at hyasynthbio.com