Yeah, so I told Kyriakos, as I said, if you're a founder today, you're competing with Mr. Beast. And, you know, one time, one of our investors, he said to me, the only thing that matters for a consumer startup is eyes and ears. Some of our former interns might take this too far. Shout out to my man, Rory Lee from Cluelea. But maybe people didn't get that joke as much as I thought they would. But, you know, I think when you think about eyes and ears, it's an interesting point because now we're in a world where anyone can put their video camera on t Kyriakos: It's amazing how founders can now tell their own stories. You don't have to rely on The Wall Street Journal or The New York Times. You, as a founder, control your narrative. If you don't like what people are saying about your product or company, you can tell your own story. Generally, founders are good people trying to do good work. That's powerful in marketing. We tell our story, and we're proud of it. Sometimes, our story might be taken in different ways, but as a founder, you have to remember that you control your narrative. Kian: I was saying to someone recently, maybe the first hire next to the founder should be a videographer. You're funny with technology, but you're also funny with narrative and marketing. If you view marketing and storytelling as important as technical skills, you can build a formidable business. Silicon Valley is embracing communications as a tool alongside technology to win. The best businesses combine technological alpha with marketing alpha. Kyriakos: Let's talk about the lean startup versus the moonshot. How should people think about these things? Kian: There's a funny tweet from Sam Altman about starting with lower stakes. Even Elon and Sam started with lower stakes. The number one thing is to get started. You don't need a lot of capital. Silicon Valley is like a glass dome with entry points like YC, Z Fellows, and a few angel investors. It's accessible for anyone who really wants it. Get your thing started, scale it up, make some money, and then maybe go for the moonshot. Nucleus is unique because I had a strong vision for a moonshot and a specific plan to start software native because it was cheaper. If you feel compelled by your moonshot, you'll go do it. Otherwise, building in a scrappy, customer-obsessed fashion is sensible. Kyriakos: From the genetic standpoint, if someone realizes they have a bad disease but can't do anything about it, what would you recommend? Kian: Great question. I categorize next steps into four or five main buckets. First is urgent and actionable, like long QT syndrome, where a beta blocker can reduce the risk of dying. Then there's the Angelina Jolie bucket, like breast cancer, where you can get a double mastectomy or more aggressive screening. Another application is if you're a carrier for a rare genetic disease, like cystic fibrosis, which doesn't impact your health but could impact your child's. We launched genetic matching to see if you and your partner are a match. If not, you can do IVF to screen out the disease. Another favorite is the genetic risk for schizophrenia. Founders tend to have a high genetic risk for schizophrenia. It's actionable utility. You can be high risk but still have low overall chances of getting the condition. Lastly, for something like Alzheimer's, knowing your genetic risk helps you stay informed about research and preventative measures. Kyriakos: For some context, if you go to the Nucleus page, you'll see a dating profile with Kian. How did that go? Kian: We go on genetic dates. It's lit. We released a video of me and someone from NSF going on a date to a longevity spa. At the end, we checked if we were a genetic match. If you're not a match, you wouldn't break up; you'd do IVF to ensure you don't pass down the disease. It's about empowerment, not breaking up relationships. In our case, Aurora and I weren't a match, so we didn't plan to date further. It's your choice. People already stalk potential partners' social media, so why not look at DNA? In some communities, like the Ashkenazi Jewish community, everyone is screened. It's a common-sense measure to ensure healthy children. Kyriakos: If schizophrenia is closely related to intelligence, how do you choose? Kian: People think they can pick one trait like a silver bullet, but it's like a character-building game. You can only give so much strength without losing agility. If you want a kid to be exceptional, you might have to accept some risk of schizophrenia. Society will have to think about these trade-offs. Some geneticists might disagree, but intuitively, people who are a bit crazy tend to be high performers. It's true phenotypically and genetically. Parents will pick different things based on their values. It's about empowering couples, not dictating choices. Kyriakos: Assuming there is embryo selection through Nucleus for everyone, what happens in a hundred years? Kian: Sequencing, analyzing, and engineering DNA will converge, creating a company as consequential as the largest AGI company. Sequencing a human genome will cost nothing, making it ubiquitous. IVF will become cheaper and less invasive. Artificial wombs are being developed. You'll be able to sequence any embryo, conduct reproduction entirely in vitro, and engineer DNA cheaply. This technology will be available to everyone, not just the rich. Genetic diseases will become archaic, and parents can make enhancements available to everyone. It's about making genetic technology accessible and ubiquitous. Kyriakos: How many of you have questions? Okay, five people. Anyone more? Audience Member: What trade-off do you think is optimal for your child? Kian: It's not about what I think; it's what the couple wants. Some traits might lead to intelligence or being a founder, but if you're too intelligent, you might be a bad founder. These things aren't silver bullets. People often pick traits similar to themselves. It's about the couple's value frameworks. Audience Member: What about scaling around regulatory hurdles? Kian: Nucleus is a clinical-grade test approved by CMS and the U.S. government. We comply with all regulations and want to help form regulations for genetic technology. Technology moves faster than regulations, so we need good regulations and sensible guardrails. It's about making technology accessible and not blocking future competitors. Audience Member: How did you go from college dropout to the forefront of this technology? Kian: Science is public. Anyone can read a nature paper and understand the intellectual frontier. If I wanted to build a company, I'd find the foremost paper on the topic, read it, and fill in the gaps. It's like going to the gym every day for 12 hours. You build an intellectual castle, and then you can independently derive insights. It's about productizing science and scaling it with capital and people. Audience Member: What can Nucleus do and what can't it do in terms of IVF selection? Kian: Scientists estimate the genetic contribution to traits like height, intelligence, and extroversion. Even with the best genetic model, there will be error. DNA is not destiny; there's always environmental influence. Nucleus provides analyses with substantial error bars. It's a tool to help parents, but the rest is up to free will and choice. Audience Member: Could you touch more on the capital and labor aspect of scaling an idea? Kian: You have the intuition and an idea to scale, but you didn't have the PhD or credibility behind it. It's about understanding the intellectual frontier and applying the startup model of capital and people. It's the same object, just different instantiation. Great question. Let me elaborate more on that in the bedroom. I think the core question that one day I'm going to maybe write more about, because I really want to give anyone insight into it, is how do you actually go from a bedroom to building a company? Because there's a big gap there, admittedly. It's something that I've always struggled with communicating because it's such an involved and detailed process. It was at the very beginning of Nucleus. For founders, it's most important to understand how to take some sort of frontier thing and productize it. Let's go back to this idea that there's this intellectual frontier, and you're building up your understanding to it. Intellectualization is good, having that understanding is good, but investigativeness is fundamentally not enterprising. They're very different skill sets. To productize something, to productize science, you need a team and you need capital. Interestingly enough, when you seek and build the intellectual frontier, you identify scientists at the leading or bleeding edge of it. In other words, you're finding your actual future employees. Think about that. When you read that Nature paper, who wrote it? There you go. If you go to a scientist and say, "Join my startup and look at my bedroom," they're going to be like, "No way." But here's what's interesting: the scientist might have a PhD student or know someone. When you talk to scientists about productizing their work, it's such an unusual thing in academia. It's like music to a good scientist's ears. For me, there was a scientist doing research on the frontiers of polygenic prediction. I started emailing him to help answer my intellectual questions on genetics under a pseudonym. We developed a relationship, and eventually, I told him I was a student at Penn because I wanted to buy his academic project, which we did. I put him on as an advisor. Notice how these things became inextricable. In doing the intellectual pursuit, you get a mind map of who the important players are. Then you do what is a Kian signature: you put them on the advisory board to then get them as an employee. Great tactic because people won't join as an employee. But you say, "Here's a little bit of equity, go on the advisory board, use their name, use their credibility." Keep punching up, keep punching up to go back to them and say, "Look at this momentum, look what we've built, look how we're scaling fast." No scientist, when it's their baby, when it's their work, wouldn't want to get in on this. This kid really knows what he's talking about. I believe fully in this vision, I'm going to hop on board. In a way, when you go through the intellectual maze, you end up solving both problems in one go. But here's the thing: the goal now isn't just to pick some random intellectual topic and go really deep on that because you're never going to make it. It's too hard, too long, too technical, too mentally intensive, too lonely. That's why it always starts with the most upstream thing: if I could do anything in the world, if I had all the money in the world, what would I do? Almost always, people say, "I would do this thing," and then they list a whole bunch of reasons why they can't. You have to follow your bliss. There's a great quote I love: "The best way to save the world is to begin by saving yourself, and then you can save the world." I really believe that to be true. Those who enlighten, enlighten. From that perspective, even before you think about what intellectual maze to go down, it's a much better question to ask, "What is my bliss?" Then you can apply the theory of the maze and everything I described to you, but you have to get the most upstream thing right. Because the reality is not all of us are going to build the artificial womb or weight lift for 12 hours a day because we don't really care about being a weightlifter. Solve the meta problem, and eventually, the world will fall in place for you. It's always been surprising to me that when I talk about genetics now, people come to me to ask about the frontier of genetics and genetics testing technology. It's kind of a weird thing because I began in my bedroom. It's a weird dissonance for me sometimes. But I guess no one has spent such intense effort, sincerity of effort, and productization such that when you rise with your company and your idea, the world isn't a fixed way. It just kind of gets out of the way for you. It's a very interesting thing. You don't have to worry about if something's in vogue or not because by the nature of your curiosity, you make it in vogue. Thanks, guys. One more question for you, are you doing the cold plunge?
