A quick note about my grandmother and the author of this essay. Her name was Phyllis Draper and she had Parkinson’s Disease for 40 years. She wrote this in 2006, but as you read - it will feel very applicable to today. It is long, but I highly recommend taking the time to read it - it will put you at the forefront of understanding the world of Biology today.

My grandmother swam every day until she couldn’t, then she walked two miles a day until she couldn’t, then she walked as far as she could until she couldn’t. She always showed up with a smile when she fell and a “Whoopsy”. She was not a scientist. She was a patient, and it is hard to read this and not believe she knew more than anyone on the topic of Parkinson’s.

I’ve read this essay now hundreds of times, it is hopeful of the transition from chemistry to Biology for the cure of Parkinson’s. It discusses the social, religious and scientific debates of stem cells — it even has a digression, which is a quick sci-fi concept she wrote with a great sense of humor.

This essay has become the core thesis of Boost VC for Biology over the last 3 years. Unfortunately, my grandmother passed away before any reality of stem cells revolutions emerged — due to many forces, some of which she describes.

I believe today we have the tools to cure everything, and at Boost VC, we want to be a part of that.

Stem Cells and Digressions.

For the past century, most of the advances in medicine have been based on the use of chemistry. The new approach is to use biology to attack diseases by using the body’s own building blocks, called stem cells. This marks a new and very exciting era in medicine, and has the potential to cure a range of diseases that presently afflict roughly half of the world’s population.

Stem cells are the basic building blocks of life. A fertilized human egg, called an embryo, contains cells that have the ability to divide for indefinite periods, and eventually grow into all 200 or so specialized cells in the body. The body also produces a certain number of stem cells that remain active throughout most of our lives but turn into specific cell types such as skin and bone cells. These are called adult stem cells. They are already proving useful in treatments of certain cancers—those which need bone marrow transplants, for instance. No one knows exactly how most therapies can be developed, but scientists know that the continued study of stem cells will reap many benefits for the world in ways which as yet we can only imagine.

Therapeutic cloning, as distinguished from reproductive cloning, also known as somatic cell nuclear transfer, has as its goal to create a new embryo from cloned cells and to use these embryos for research. Thus cloning has its place in the stem cell controversy. And it is the most controversial of all controversy surrounding stem cells.

Most of us non-scientists were not aware of stem cells until relatively recently and today they have become among the most controversial subjects around. People who under ordinary circumstances could be counted on for their rationality and solid judgment, upon entering into a conversation about the efficacy or moral right of the study of stem cells, become totally unpredictable. Much of the debate, both scientific and ethical, has focused on its two potential applications: Stem cell cloning for reproductive purposes and stem cell cultivation for the purposes of research.

The term stem cell was the name given by Gail Martin, a researcher at UCSF who in 1981 isolated some cells from a mouse embryo, and named them stem cells because she discovered nearly every type of cell stemmed from them. Stem cells can be found in embryos, and in adults, although the procedure for harvesting adult stem cells is more difficult than finding them in embryos. Almost 20 years after the discovery of stem cells in mice, researchers found equally versatile stem cells in human beings. This spawned a running controversy concerning cloning and the ethics of tampering with nature, and in a premature backlash, caused the U.S. government, in 2001, to declare that to work on cloning was a criminal offense. The government did not disallow stem cell research for purposes of research, however, although they limited the research to a very small allotment of cell lines to study, which is what prompted California’s Proposition 71. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Stem cell cultivation is on two tracks. In early human embryos there are stem cells that can in theory grow into any of the body’s tissues or organs. Human embryonic stem cells have to be grown for nearly five days, and obtaining these cells has in the past meant that the embryos must be destroyed. In adult stem cells, there is no need to destroy an embryo, which makes the science less controversial. But some scientists believe that adult stem cells are more limited in scope, and good for only a limited number of roles in the body. Therefore these experts are not persuaded that the use of adult stem cells will be as therapeutically useful over the long term as the embryonic stem cells, which hold out great promise for curing diseases. There has been considerable success already, however, with certain treatments involving adult stem cells, such as bone marrow transplants. In the process of experimenting, scientists have also discovered stem cells in the brain, as well as the bone marrow, also in blood vessels, skin, and liver. Though they are much more difficult to harvest, there is still room for hope that these stem cells will prove to be even more successful in the long run.

People who, on either ethical or religious grounds, see the embryo as a full human being object strenuously to what they see as the murder of a potential baby. Others feel equally strenuously that it is cruel to deny the research money and support for what could be a lifesaver of another kind: The potential to treat, and even to cure, certain scourges of the population. Unfortunately, to weigh in on one side against the other in this case is fraught with choices one should never have to make.

On October 11, 2005, an article appeared in the New York Times that seemed to be a breakthrough for those ethicists who maintain the belief that a human embryo is the same as a baby because it can grow into a baby. Two scientists, one from Harvard, and one from MIT, think that they have found a way. Despairing that the government would not fund anything with an embryo in the title, Dr. William Hurlbut from Stanford explains this new process: “What I’m suggesting is creating something that never rises to the level of a living being. No embryo is ever formed. It’s not a human embryo if it doesn’t have the potential to develop into human form.” Instead, he called this a “biological artifact.” In order to make this artifact, first one separates the genes from the adult cell from among those that are needed for the full development of an embryo, and then the altered cell is added to an egg. The eggs could come from unused eggs at fertility clinics. Or, the doctors say, the eggs might come from women’s ovaries collected during an operation such as a hysterectomy. In fact these researchers claim that further study might lead to being able to do without the egg as well, by adding proteins to the stem cell in the right amounts.

Many people, including John M. Haas, president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, and Edward Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, agree that this discovery has forged a way for ethicists who have previously been averse to any research on stem cells to accept the fact that this study would not affect the birth of any baby. Therefore it was presumed that the naysayers would be whole-heartedly behind stem cell research from this point forward.

Several days later I read in the San Francisco Chronicle that this was not the case. Many people were not convinced that the new method was anything more than a thinly veiled attempt to call the experiment with embryonic stem cells by another name. A biological artifact to them was still an embryo. The federal government is in this camp, unfortunately for those who wish to accelerate study in the U.S. It would appear that any attempt to destroy what is considered by these people a human being from the time of its conception will be met with implacable resistance. There has been no appreciable attitude change from early in this century.

The controversy is still alive today. For this reason, the research has not been accorded the money and go-ahead from the national government, and the state of California has taken matters into its own hands by passing a proposition that allowed funds ($3 billion) for the purposes of stem cell research. The University of California in San Francisco and Stanford University are both at the forefront of that research. However, California is presently involved with lawsuits that threaten to make the proposition—passed over a year ago—invalid. The two universities, having gathered together an impressive lineup of talent from all relevant disciplines, have had to apply for private grants in order to keep them afloat. Once again they have been delayed in their search for a breakthrough that will surely change the face of medicine forever.

Cloning has become the most frightening of all stem cell controversy. Though in literature and entertainment the topic has always been popular, in real life, the prospect of cloning humans is too science fictitious to contemplate, but we do contemplate it, nevertheless. Recently, Science Magazine carried the story of a Korean scientist, Dr. Hwang, who claimed to have cloned a dog, having spent many years and thousands of dollars in the effort. Americans had been experimenting with the cloning of dogs for years, without success, but they were eager to hear how it was done. It was considered by scientists to be the Mt. Everest of accomplishments and held promise for therapeutic breakthroughs, because dogs’ diseases are the most like human ones. It was acknowledged even at the time that it’s far too soon and complicated to clone a favorite dog pet. Yet no one could imagine how many windows were opened for the future. They were amazed and impressed. The Koreans were very proud of their accomplishment, and hailed Dr. Hwang as their number one citizen.

On January 10th the news came that Dr. Hwang and his staff had falsified all his cloning experiments. He claims to have been the first to clone a human cell by inserting a adult cell’s nucleus into a fertile egg to make embryonic cells. With this method he claims also to have treated 11 people in a first step towards therapeutic treatment with their own regenerative tissue. If this were true, there would indeed be reason to celebrate, and in fact Dr. Hwang would well deserve the postage stamp that Korea issued in his honor. However, his peers also believe that he falsified the evidence of cloning of Snuffy the baby Afghan hound.

Other animals have been cloned, with varying degrees of success. In March of 1999 four calves were created using stem cells from a prize Japanese bull. In March of 2000, a company hoping to generate organs for humans cloned five piglets. A cat named CC, for carbon copy, was created in 2003. Of course we are aware that every identical twin or triplet is a clone, a natural one. But these cloned animals have not proven to be as healthy as the originals, including Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal, who has developed bad arthritis, although her “mother” shows no sign of it. Most scientists would like to tone down the controversy concerning stem cells, but it doesn’t seem to go away. It seems that no matter what they do in the way of stem cell research, it’s sure to displease somebody.

What all agree upon is that the U.S. is falling farther and farther behind in this new field of therapy. Meanwhile people on both ends of the spectrum of opinion remain adamantly convinced of their own point of view. The people in the middle, however, are much more flexible on the subject of stem cells, and their opinions vary when questions are asked in different ways. This is a hopeful sign.

One remembers the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century, in California. The eugenicists had the idea to create a master race. A certain Mr. Goethe felt that animal breeding concepts would be possible to employ on humans. The eugenicists advocated sterilization of immigrants and tough border controls, with Nordic purity as their goal. A true California dream for a while, the idea was smashed with the advent of Hitler and his master race, which demonstrated the horror of ethnic cleansing, and lost Mr. Goethe his followers.

I remember being very disturbed when I first heard about Dolly. That one could clone a sheep meant that—gulp—perhaps humans would be next. I found a short story I had written back then for fun and I include it here as a not-so-serious digression. It depicts a world full of emasculated men due to the loss of their reproductive usefulness. On the subject of cloning, it stars a clone of Arnold Schwarzenegger, our present governor.

Cloning

Last night, in the packed ballroom of the Marriott-Hyatt Hotel in Abilene, Kansas, Arnold Schwarzenegger C5 blew away the competition to become the winner of the Boy Toy of the Year Award for the second straight year. In a stunning finale, after the obligatory promenade in the Bathing Suit competition, he struck a dramatic pose, displaying his vast musculature to a rapt audience, flexing seductively to the music of Claude Debussy. He was accorded a standing ovation.

Many people felt that A.S. Clone 5 had already assured his victory the previous evening with his strong performance in the Talent Event—in which he gave a recitation of Robert Browning’s love poem “How Do I Love Thee” while standing atop a burning automobile and fighting off a horde of killer ants.

A.S. Clone 5 traces his ancestry in an uninterrupted ribbon of DNA to his pre-Clonial forebear Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was conceived in the scatter-shot manner—at the time the only known technique for procreation. Providing no guarantee as to size, gender, coloring, or intelligence, this method rarely produced perfect specimens. Pioneers in the Clone industry on the lookout for prototypes discovered in Schwarzenegger that rare miracle of perfection, and secured his Clonial potential, and all rights thereof, in perpetuity. Thus, despite all the piracy and experimentation that plagued the industry’s early years, his DNA has remained unchanged and completely pure. If there were ever any doubt that this was so, the company points to the heavy German-Austrian accent still prominent in A.S. Clone 5; it is a vestigial characteristic—as A.S. Clone 5 has never set foot in Austria or Germany.

In a far-ranging interview after the award ceremony, A.S. Clone 5 entertained questions on a number of topics, and became particularly animated when discussing his lineage, long a source of great pride. “My illustrious ancestor five generations ago,” he said, “although he was just like me…hell, he was me… this guy lived in a completely different world. There was no way a woman could get by without a man to start the fetus-making process. Men were very important, in fact, they were essential. They were so powerful that in those days they ran everything. Their attitude was called macho, or machismo, I believe.” He then explained, in answer to the question posed by Walter Cronkite Clone 5, as to what the women’s role was back in pre-Clonial days. A.S. Clone 5 is known to be a student of history, so it was not surprising that this question elicited an expansive answer. “Women,” he said, “were treated about the way we are treated today. They didn’t run things the way they do now. There were almost no women in the government, let alone presidents of the country. Men today are pretty much sex objects and pleasure providers, and I for one don’t mind this at all,” he added with a grin.

Although he claims to be in sympathy to some extent with the reactionary Back to the Basics party—who want to re-associate procreation with recreation and bring the man’s sperm back into work as well as play—he wonders whether “people will be willing to take such a crap shoot approach to the reproductive process after all these years of cloning.” On the other hand, he is known to be very much offended by the excesses in women’s fascination with the male body. He explains the consequences of sexual harassment in the workplace: “It keeps men from wearing tight pants, because we’re subject to so much harassment and crude remarks about our measurements and backsides.” Overall, however, A.S. Clone 5 enjoys the role of pleasure provider, and looks forward to another year of Boy Toy activities and appearances around the country. His first appearance will be to promote the newest Ken Doll, whose measurements are said to be modeled after his own.

* * *

More Digressions

Several novels that I have read lately are science fiction of a higher order, and posit three different anti-utopias or dystopias. Each one leads into areas that really surprise. The first one is called The Slynx, a Russian novel written by the niece of Tolstoy, Tatyana Tolstaya. This science fiction tale is set in Russia some two hundred years after the bomb has fallen. What is left of civilization are merely remnants of a culture so torn that it is disassociated from any world view, values, or behaviors of the past. The ruler has got hold of some books and plagiarizes from them in his speeches, mixing styles as varied as nursery rhymes and tax reports. This is carried out very successfully as his subjects, not permitted to read books, are always very impressed by the words, no matter what he says. He is a god to them. His name is Fyodor Kusmich Glorybe. Among his many talents he claims to have invented fire. A couple of the elders are misfits in that society but are the only ones left who have managed to hold on to bits of civilization. In their midst live humans who are saddled with “consequences,” which is the name they give to the genetic altering that has taken place due to the bomb’s after effects. Unlike cloning, which in our time offers possibilities to create perfection, these people suffer from a scourge of bizarre alteration. Our narrator, Benedickt, has a tail. His girlfriend—later his wife—seems perfect but for her hooves, a “consequence” that she shares with her parents. Others have really bad “consequences.” One of Benedickt’s friends is a very nice girl but she has a beak sticking out of her forehead, and only one eye.

Rats are the mainstay of the economy, and the principal source of food. Most meals the author describes have a rat dish in it. Like other science fiction tales that hold a message, The Slynx shows us a world that is the direct result of man’s follies, in particular and foremost the hydrogen bomb. The book is often very funny, but its underpinnings are at all times deadly serious. We are compelled to wonder if our “consequences” could be similarly devastating. The slynx, by the way, is a dreaded monster who awaits people in the woods. We think he is not real.

It was sheer coincidence that the next book I chose to read was also a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel, this one called Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood. Against a background of massive destruction that may have also come from a bomb explosion, we find that science has gone far beyond what is good for us. Scientific cabals had formed and kept secret from each other. The most powerful group rules everything at this point and is headed by Crake, who is in the business of cloning humans. The narrator is Snowman, a ragged, dirty man whom we first find sitting in a tree wrapped in a dirty sheet. He is starving and lonely, with only his memories to keep him in touch with a past that bears some resemblance to today, but none to the world he now inhabits. In that earlier world his name was Jimmy. We learn that Jimmy had friends and playmates. His good friend was Crake—who grew up to be the biggest cloner and manipulator of clones and people. Crake has become mad during his lifetime of cloning in his sacrosanct factory, where one product is slave girls (Oryx was one of these). In fact, so many types of cloned individuals were invented that they became unrecognizable as humans. Snowman’s only companions are the perfect, green-eyed Children of Crake, who are dopey clones. The book speaks to today’s reverence for science, whose remedies we count on to cure just about everything. In this case, the powerful moguls of science are the villains in Margaret Atwood’s future world.

In Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro writes a story that seems to be a fine boarding school saga at the start, but gradually, with a few harbingers of unease sprinkled into the story line, its horrors are revealed. We are introduced to the private school where children are raised in a benign atmosphere without any contact to the outside world. They have no families. Their “guardians” are their teachers. Miss Lucy is one of their favorites. It seems a fine, loving orphanage. One day, when the children are around 15 years old, Miss Lucy tells them of their special role in life. She is prompted to tell them because she overhears two of the boys making plans about what they’d like to do when they leave school, and she feels pity for them. Only on page 82 does the author tell us what is going on behind what seemed to be an idyllic school environment, and what is behind all the vagueness of the questions that had come up from time to time. The children are clones, who, like the pigs of today’s cloning efforts, are created solely for harvesting their organs. One group is meant to become the Donors and the others are to be their Caretakers. The Donors are to be ready to “donate” organs when needed. The maximum number they are asked to give is four, though often Donors die before “donating” all four.

The story tells of genetic manipulation for a cause, which though noble (we need organ transplants), treats human life as just so much clay to serve human ends. It is never clear whether this is a scientific experiment or a moneymaking scheme. The most heartbreaking thing of all is that some of these clones have emotions, which apparently have not been bred out of them. They have sex (though none can have babies) and develop deep attachments to each other. It is the particular cruelty of this fact that makes the book so devastating.

Reading these books leads one to think about the situation with stem cells today and about how scientific advances can have unforeseen consequences. Certainly the far-right religious folk are vociferous and fiercely against any new stem cell study, claiming that the use of embryos is murder of a human being. Dissenters cite the idea that because of a minority opinion of what is ethical, we stand in the way of progress towards cures for millions of people, thus creating a situation that is, to them, unethical. Somehow I don’t feel that the religious and Republican far-right is concerned about the advancement of science so much as they mind the methods being used. They are still a minority, and there is growing support on the part of other leaders in the U.S. One of these, Governor Doyle of Wisconsin, as part of his campaign for reelection, says he aims to have the research market of stem cells a growing industry by 2015, employing thousands of people and generating $8m, citing that his state was already ahead of most other states in terms of research (California Included) and stands in a good position to surge ahead.

It appears that no one can leave the subject alone. Ever since the Woody Allen movie I saw years ago in which a character was to be cloned from a nose, I’ve found that cloning has creeped up in our literature in science fiction, and in the media. One can hardly ignore it today, and especially in California. The courts here are the battleground between two sides; the state is currently waging a battle to strike down Proposition 71. The proposition as an attempt to circumvent federal restrictions on research involving human embryonic stem cells. The legal maneuvering against initiative represents politics at work, and makes the issue muddier and the outcome else predictable. The California government and the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, the governing body of the stem cell research, are at loggerheads over certain issues. The state is worried about a loss of revenue due to the fact that the federal tax laws might not allow the state to claim royalties from a private enterprise. They worry that the leader of the institute, who also initiated the initiative, Robert Klein, is not a scientist— although he has collected many noted scientists for the institute. Klein in fact has been criticized by some for having omitted some crucial information to the voters at the time of the voting last year. The state also has a concern about the ethics of using eggs from women who undergo the lengthy process, and are remunerated for their donations. It seems to me that these are negotiable, minor obstacles to what has been referred to as “California’s boldest undertaking of this century.” It’s a gamble, but many people think the rewards would be so extraordinary, financially as well as curatively, that it could change the world.

As you may have noted, try as I might, l am not an objective bystander in all of this. I follow every article and paper I can get my hands on to see how the study of stem cells is progressing, if at all. I rely on my doctor at the Parkinson’s Institute to keep me posted on any progress their scientists have made in connection with my particular scourge, Parkinson’s Disease. So tar, the news is good for the long run. Stem cells might be made to work to augment the dopamine supply that is disappearing from a Parkinsonian brain. That much they know. They also know that it will be a long time before any research is considered safe to apply to humans. So far this experiment has only been proven to work on mice. And there’s a long road to travel from mice to medications for humans. But already there is talk of a medication to prevent Parkinson’s from worsening in patients. This breakthrough may be all I can expect in my lifetime, and I shall welcome it.

The last paragraph is my favorite.

At Boost VC we want to invest in the next generation of Longevity and Bio. There are three things driving the “Why Now” for Longevity and Bio startups.

• The development of AI models to decode complex biological phenomena and their widespread adoption among startups, researchers, and citizen scientists

• People’s comfortability with at-home healthcare: Ozempic, Oura Ring, and diagnostic tests

• Advanced biological research methodologies, such as gene editing, precision nucleic acid analysis, and proteomics, becoming cheaper and faster

All of these unlocks have given the consumer the confidence and desire to know more about their health, and in many cases solve their own health problems. More stories like the founder of GitLab going “Founder Mode” on his cancer, and the Australian shrinking his dog’s tumor, are going to pop up because of the consumer’s empowerment, growing risk tolerance, and growing access to tools that lets them become the hero of their healthcare journey.

There are plenty of ways to die: cancer, neurodegeneration, cardiovascular disease, aging, etc. All diseases can and should be cured!

So what can Boost VC do? We can invest in startups who are building this next generation of “becoming your own doctor.” Giving us the super powers we need to not only live healthier and longer, but to enhance the human experience.

So here are my Requests:

• A way to diagnose and 3D print Bio-therapies in real-time, preferably at home

• A company that makes genetically enhanced species of animals - so that we can have a live pegasus.

• Using Biology - make materials that have never existed.

• Ability to predict, track, and improve your biology in real-time — move from asynchronous to persistent health.

• Programming cells to give me super powers - Strength, sleep, brain… all things

• Reversing biological damage: blindness, organ injury, neurodegeneration, inflammation, immune overreactivity, etc.

• Tools that enable anyone to understand their own biology - this is table stakes, however we still as humans fall short on these tools

• Alternative regulatory frameworks that enable innovation in Biology

• Solutions that enable people to securely own their biological data and chose how they monetize it

Some good examples of companies we have invested in:

• Colossal: The De-Exctinction company (Bringing back the wooly mammoth)

• Dognosis: Unleashing Canine Super-powers for human health

• Vertility Health: Solve genetic disease forever

• Prospera: Special Economic Zone, enabling innovation over regulation

For all intent and purpose, we live in the future that we pictured when we were kids. Rockets are flying to space every day, we can communicate or pay anyone in the world in moments, a car with no driver can come pick me up and drive me wherever I want to go, I have the knowledge and information to literally do anything ever done at my finger tips, and I flew a jetpack this year… really just wanted to remind everyone that I flew a jetpack.

Depending on whether you are a pessimist or an optimist, this is your Utopia or Dystopia.

So what’s next, and can we predict them using current trends…

First let’s talk about social trends:

1. Health metrics have become a flex that shows status

   1. No alcohol

   2. Apple Watch, Whoop, FitBit…

   3. Bio Hacking is becoming less taboo (people stopped calling it biohacking and now they call it Probiotics *jk)

2. People feel they are isolated, even if they are around other people

   1. Work is a place people get to see others

3. How we educate and schedule a kids time are a popular topics amongst those with kids

4. Education around finance and stock trading is mass market

5. Pro-Americanism

6. Old Media vs. New Media — Who do we trust?

7. Nvidia, Google, Apple, Meta, Netflix

Now lets talk about triggers that happened in 2025 that accelerated some of these trends :

1. Nick Shirley outing the Somalia/Minnesota State fraud

2. Netflix attempting to by Warner Brothers

3. Trump became president

4. Bitcoin became an endorsement on the ballot for candidates

5. The NIH had their funding cut

6. Waymo is deployed in multiple cities/ FSD in Tesla’s became awesome

7. Starlink is starting to hit mass adoption

8. VCs hit “Critical usage” of SPVs

9. Philip Rivers came out of retirement to play football

Ok, so here are my predictions for 2026:

1. The US will get hot on China for investments

2. There will be a breakthrough in Cancer, Neurodegenerative disease that are non-pharma, non-chemistry based treatments

3. The US will buy Greenland

4. Ai private schools will become the rage

5. Sentient robots will be inside 1 million homes

6. Coinbase will acquire JP Morgan Chase

7. Robinhood will acquire Morgan Stanley

8. The first $100B energy startup will happen

9. $1T worth of Fraud will be discovered and outed

10. The Ocean Cleanup will clean up all the plastic in the ocean

11. Boost VC will launch a Comic Book series that becomes a TV show on Netflix

12. Quidditch will become a nationally televised sport

13. Mr. Beast will become CEO of Twitter (aka X)

14. Aaron Rodgers will win a Superbowl, which will inspire Tom Brady to play football one last season next year

There are two great “Must Read” summaries of 2025 that I have read:

1. Fred Wilson from USV is always spot on with the summary of what matters. (Link to Blog Post)

2. Dan Wang from Hoover History Lab with his "2025 Letter” (Link to Blog Post)

My summary is a little more focused on the psychology or emotional state of the early stage investor.

First - Lets talk about what an investor is. At it’s foundation an investor is a person who participates in the brilliant invention of ownership. That ownership could be real estate, Private Equity, Stocks, Bonds, and in the case of Venture Capital: Human Endeavor. The belief that the value of something you buy today will be worth more in the future creates a fascinating world of capital allocation.

By owning something, an investor is taking a risk. That risk is based on each investor’s own internal scale of “Risk/Reward.” Often an investor may be confused with a gambler because their scale is more aggressive, and equally an investor could be ridiculed as a hoarder or scaredy cat because their scale is more cautious.

In that entire spectrum, investment decisions are made based on that “internal scale” as an individual - but the market doesn’t act as a bunch of individuals - it acts as a mob on the day to day.

Looking from the outside in: In hard times, everyone looks like a hoarder, and in great times everyone looks like a gambler. And those actions are determined by all the psychology and scale of all the players in the market: The Government, The institutions (banks), the Consumer, the Investor, and Warren Buffett (kidding, but not), and what they all want.

When thinking about 2025 I can’t help but think about the psychology of the investors in the arena, and how the early stage investors emotional state changed over the course of a year.

The things that are clear to me from 2025:

1. Capital can now centralize very quickly, every investor has access and capacity to buy almost every asset. So when one wants something - everyone seems to run at it.

2. Secondary markets are the norm now: Not many people have touched on this in their posts, but one of the things that definitely became a “Here to stay” is the existence of secondary markets - especially for valuation pricing, and partial liquidity for VCs. We are seeing the largest Valuations ever in the private market because Public capital is flying towards 10 companies in the private market. (Spacex, Anduril, OpenAi…)

3. The Pro-America movement chalked up some great investment gains in the first year with Trump in office for those investing in the frontier. Space, Defense, Ai have had remarkable price growth, and with it - talent has flooded those markets. This follows of theme, where the institution of Government is influencing early stage investing more than I have ever seen it in my career.

4. Although still problems, SF is back. Artificial intelligence headquarters lives in the brains of 18-25 year olds in San Francisco. People are moving there from all over the world to pay homage to the Mecca of Ai. Holistically, I still think that SF has systemic problems that Garry Tan and others in the Tech community are fighting to fix in SF.

5. Texas vs. California. Florida vs. New York.

6. 100% of Pro-Crypto representatives were elected during the 2024 elections, which has led to clarity and breakthroughs for Stablecoins, Bitcoin and enthusiasm.

7. Things you may have forgot for a moment that happened in 2025: New Pope was elected, Charlie Kirk was Assassinated, DOGE was a huge thing, Astronauts were stuck in Space, America invested in and owns 10% of Intel, Spacex launched 167 rockets (RocketLab did 21), Firefly Aerospace was the first private company to get to the moon with the Blue Ghost Lander.

In conclusion - 2025 fast forwarded movements that were happening, technical, governmental and social. Financially, for the time being it feels we are more than ever tied to the whims of the government enthusiasm around tech advancement, Which has been a reward to the early stage investor - but what happens in 2026. I BELIEVE GREAT THINGS!!!!

Boost VC had an incredible year. 13 years of compounding feels like the ball is starting to roll down hill.

Boost VC 2025

• 63 new investments

• New $87m Fund 4

• Co-Led a $300m Series D into Radiant Nuclear

• Returned $42m to Limited Partners (Mostly from Fund 1)

• 4 startups reached $1B valuation from the portfolio (21Shares *acquired, K2Space, Radiant Nuclear, and one other unannounced)

• 1000+ investor introductions to portfolio companies

• Not to mention two founders summits, one Bio Camp, and two demo days

I thought long and hard about why last year was such a big year for Boost VC, and a few things come to the front of my mind.

1. Our team understands that we are building something different, but we are building it together

2. “Don’t interrupt compounding unnecessarily” - Charlie Mung

3. Have rules, so that you can break them (A $300m Series D in Radiant Nuclear wasn’t on my Bingo Card)

4. This is a game of endurance and optimism

5. We can only control what we can control, if we believe something that the rest of the investment world doesn’t - that is a scarce resource and we must act!

6. Speed is a competitive advantage when it comes to capital

This phrase is the most common phrase that has been spoken to me over the last 4 years when getting pitched by a founder, or meeting an investor for the first time.

Today, the Boost VC investment team levels up - Gus Domel is officially a Partner.

If you don’t read anything else and want to know why -

• Boost VC invested in 70 new deals in 2025. Gus brought 50% of those to Boost VC. He is the best in the business at sourcing.

• He shows up with a work ethic that feels “Founder level” and aspires to build Boost VC into something greater!

• His support to the founders is incredible - He alone introduced 500 investors to Founders last year, and thats just the ones we can track.

Gus comes from a more academic background, getting a PhD from Harvard and doing his Post-Doc at Stanford (two things we try not to hold against him). He is a technical generalist who has worked on robotic tentacles, biotech and more.

At Boost VC, our mission is to accelerate the Sci-Fi future by getting capital into the best founders’ hands. Over the last 4 years Gus has been at Boost VC, he has leveled up our deal making ability from about 30 investments per year to 50+!

To the outside world, VCs and Founders alike, you probably already think of Gus when someone mentions Boost VC. He is everywhere. The brand is building and Gus has been a big part of that.

We are SO EXCITED to tell the world that Gus is now a Partner at Boost VC! LFG!

Some more fun facts:

• He is a Chicago Bears fan… and the White Sox

• From stories, an excellent Rocket League player

• Has visited all MLB stadiums in the US

• Gus is addicted to sugar

• Shorted Academia and became a VC

Ever since Brayton Williams and I founded Boost VC, the entire premise has been about getting the right resources to the greatest people, building important things. Traditionally we focus on the PreSeed stage — Today we made an exception. Today, we get to announce that we Co-Led a $300m Series D round in Radiant Nuclear. *Checks Notes*… OVER $300m!!!

So how did a Pre-Seed fund end up leading a Series D!? 👇

The quick answer is the Radiant team is incredible, we have been working with them for 6 years, and nuclear energy is the future. The longer answer started 6 years ago:

In 2020, in the middle of lockdowns, Zoom fatigue, and a tech ecosystem sprinting toward software and remote work, I took a first call with Doug Bernauer, Founder and CEO of Radiant. In a “macro" market that was short term rewarding software - Doug and the incredible team at Radiant were building nuclear reactors. The most in-person, and ambitious concept we had heard in a long time.

In 2020, this idea was deeply unpopular.

1. Capital was flooding into software. “Remote-first” was the popular thesis. Anything that required people, atoms, factories, or capital expenditure was viewed as risky, slow, and out of step with the moment.

2. The winds of regulation were not in their favor. There were many more priorities before energy in 2020, and the new dawn of startup government contractors had not hit the market yet.

However, we believed something that the rest of the world did not - Nuclear power was going to be very important in the next 100 years, and we believed that Doug Bernauer was the right founder for that to happen.

I said yes immediately. Doug is the type of founder that can take complex topics and communicate them in the simplest of terms. He was high energy and optimistic, it was one of the most no-brainer decisions I have made as an early stage investor.

5 years ago Doug presented this slide below. He is only ~1 month off his original Fueled Reactor test. Even the nuclear companies with years of head start have not done a fueled demonstration with their reactor. Not a single new reactor design in the United States has gone live in OVER 50 years. This is about to change.

Shipping on time is exceptionally rare in hardware. It’s almost unheard of in deep tech, however Radiant continues to achieve milestones on time!

Some of the best VC brands noticed: USV, A16Z, DCVC and many more fantastic investors have supported them over the past 6 years.

Why did Boost VC invest a larger amount of money than we have ever invested in any deal, ever?

BECAUSE WE CAN JUST DO THINGS!!!!

We saw the opportunity to help that no one else seemed to see. At this moment and time, we had a chance to be a part of history and we took it. This is a historic investment for Boost VC, Radiant and Nuclear energy as a whole. The next 100 years will run on Nuclear Energy starting with Radiant.

At the end of the day, I have been a people investor - and I believe in Doug and the management team they have built. Radiant continues to be an easy investment to make when you see the output of progress they have made since Day 1.

Conviction is rare, and sometimes the best investment decisions are ones you have already made. I think this is just the beginning for Radiant.

When I was in 8th grade, I was on the JV-B2 basketball team. That means that I didn’t make Varsity A, I also didn’t make Junior Varsity B1. For the record, I wasn’t bad, just misunderstood :)

I like basketball though. It’s probably the best team sport I play.

One afternoon in 8th grade, my parents wanted me out of the house, so my Dad challenged me with a clear goal: “Shoot ten, 3 pointers, in a row.” I had never tried it, so I took the challenge and went for it.

We had a basketball hoop in the backyard, and my brother and I had recently measured out a 3 point line, so I started to shoot. I was out there for hours. I got to 4 in a row a lot. I got to 6 in a row a few times. I hit 8 in a row twice.

After a few hundred shots, the sky got so dark that I couldn’t shoot anymore, and I walked in disappointed. I hadn’t hit my goal. It turns out I like to hit goals.

Later that week at school, during PE, we had a three point competition for the 8th graders. All the Varsity A players were there. We had one minute to hit as many three pointers as we could WITH someone passing the balls to us — way easier than chasing every ball down and calibrating the shot like I had been doing earlier in the week at my house.

So I started and missed my first few, and then I locked in and hit 14 in a minute. Not in a row, just in a minute. After three head to head competitions, I ended up being the highest three point shot conversion in all three head to head challenges. I won the competition by a fair margin.

To everyone else, this seemed crazy random. I remember people being very confused that I had hit the most three pointers. Even the coaches! More than anyone on Varsity a by a fair margin.

I’ve always loved evoking that feeling of surprise in people, the ability to be underestimated is a great skill. However, in order to evoke surprise you have to have set expectations of a baseline. And my baseline was “Average basketball player.” Which means they already have context for “Good basketball player.”

When starting a company, especially in aerospace or Deep Tech, the problem and opportunity is that no one knows the baseline. No one knows what good is.

• Is a 30 second rocket engine test impressive?

• Is 10 hours of flight on a drone good or bad?

• Is a dome test for nuclear good?

So investors and the general public have no context for what a “Good basketball player” is. We don’t know if you can shoot threes from the corner - we don’t even know if shooting threes from the corner gets you points!

In a software startup this is less true, there are benchmarks of what “Good” is that people can compare you to, but in hardware products this is far more difficult.

Founders have a tendency of getting too much in the weeds, and assuming that the rest of the world is having the same conversations that they are, which makes it more difficult to communicate progress with clarity. When aerospace companies announce something, my first thought tends to be “Is that impressive or not?” and “Why?”

Everything you do as an aerospace startup is educating the market on what good is, and so as a startup, it’s important to tell us “What good is and why it is good.” And then get back to us on that every month.

It only works to go in a cave and come out with a Zig zap or a wig wam that’s impressive if I already have context of what is impressive about it. Always assume no context. :)

Today we have 40 startups nominated by 17 different funds.

The amazing thing about our Demo Day is that it’s a moment where the whole community of Deep Tech (Investors and Founders) get to help define what the future will look like, and translate that through the concept of Deep Technologies. Some common themes across the startups in different industries:

• Proof of Human — We seem far enough into AI, where people are concerned about security. For both enterprise and consumer.

• Now there are Robots being built, but how do you actually integrate the robots into the human flow, in the industrial setting.

• The common themes in Aerospace/Defense are Data, movement and bio in space.

  • Claws that move things, Carriers that drop things, and biological experimentation

• Additionally there’s a larger theme around autonomous vehicle mobility, and having the vehicles work in swarms.

  • ie: Vehicles running errands for you

• Bio — Surgeries are dangerous and diseases kill us — Great people are solving those problems!

If you are an investor - please tune in. The event is a week long online, but then goes away. This year is our best group of founders yet.

Sign Up for Demo Day Here.

This fund will invest in the founders creating our future: from nuclear energy to genetics to space travel, Boost VC has been on the forefront of writing the very first checks into founders building the Sci-Fi future we read about as kids.

With our new $87M Fund 4, we’ll have the privilege of helping another 150 startups begin their journey. That brings Boost VC’s assets under management to over $300M, with a portfolio that’s already grown to 400 active companies across every corner of Deep Tech.

It’s this combination of discipline, velocity, and community that keeps our LPs doubling down - not to mention the returns we’re proud to share publicly:

• Fund Alpha ($6.5m - 2013): 2.15× DPI (cash back to investors) & 6.24× TVPI (cash back + what’s still left)

• Fund I ($38m - 2016): 4.35× DPI & 7.02× TVPI

• (Funds II–III are still too early for DPI, but already strong performance.)

Our strategy has always been simple: invest first in the mission driven founders tinkering with new fringe technologies who are ignored by other VCs. A few companies in the portfolio include:

• Coinbase: Our biggest crypto bet went public, now worth ≈$80B and reporting $1.43B in Q2 2025 profit.

• Radiant Nuclear: Closed a $165M Series C (a16z, DCVC, Founders Fund, USV) in May 2025 to commercialize portable micro-reactors. They will be the first live new reactor design in over 50 years when they go live in 2026.

• Colossal Biosciences: Raised a $200M Series C in January 2025 at a $10.2B valuation to accelerate de-extinction, and yes - they’ve brought back the Dire Wolf.

• DeepGram: The leading Voice AI company with 400+ enterprise customers and over 50K years of audio processed.

• K2 Space: Raised a $110M Series B (Altimeter, LightSpeed) in February 2025 to scale its multi-orbit satellite platform inside a new 180k ft² Torrance factory.

• Volley: Closed a $55M Series C (Lightspeed, Microsoft) in July 2024; its voice-enabled AI games are now played in 30M+ homes across Alexa, Roku, and mobile.

To founders: If you’re raising $2M or less and building the future (time travel, teleportation, superpowers), we want to meet you. It only takes five minutes to apply: www.boost.vc.

Onward. Let’s make sci-fi a reality. 🚀

- Adam & Brayton

My definition of business is to make promises and deliver on promises.

The thing about a deal is that you are making promises on two sides of every deal. One person is promising one thing, and one person is promising something in trade.

Often negotiations in a deal will get complicated. They become large “If/then” statements about what would happen if things would go wrong. Handshakes work in the world where things go right, but contracts are there to remind everyone what is supposed to do when things go wrong.

I have an affinity for simple deals. In sales, fundraising, partnerships. If things are getting too complicated, it usually means that some amount of trust is lacking in the deal.

Keep deals simple.

Recently we have been seeing a lot of great founders come out of a specific University in Zurich, called ETH Zurich.

It was curious to me at first, because I’ve never known Switzerland in terms of taking risks, and founders need to be built in a way to take the most amount of risk on themselves that they can. It turns out at the university there’s a special place where big ideas go to get started: The Student Project house!

"There’s no better place for an early-stage founder than the Student Project House. Our journey also started there." - Jan Schnyder CEO of Nunu

“It’s even more remarkable that, with so much entrepreneurial energy, Switzerland continues to project an image of stability, risk aversion” - Erik Aznauryan Founder of HarborSite

The talented pool of founders has been undeniable - We invested in 4 startups out of the school in the last year!

• Nunu: Ai agent game testing

• Ogment: The future of Ai agents

• Loki Robotics: The dirty job of cleaning toilets… with robots

• HarborSite: Bio startup focused on precision gene editing

Robotics, AI and Bio, all from one location! All talented and thinking large.

When we realized that the talent pool was dense, we decided to partner with the entrepreneurs at the school, our friend Arian from Earthling VC and put on a pitch competition!

Applications are due soon - so please apply here if you are interested.

Sometimes the fun is the value of something.

—

In my life, I’ve lived with information being an uncertain well of change. It has consistently surprised me at how people can be so certain of how the world works, and use terms like “Always” or “Never” so triumphantly, as if the world has never changed before, and it won’t change again.

In my investment experience, great investments are determined emotionally when they strike a social chord that makes people feel compelled to: Disagree, laugh or debate about the moral implications. These concepts often live at the edge of long term social change that will happen, and will be massive.

• When I was growing up, my generation was told not to waste our time playing video games, because you won’t get into a good school. Today there are scholarships for video games.

• When I was growing up, you were told not to get into a strangers car. Today, Uber has made it ubiquitous to get into a strangers car.

• Even in my adult life, “The government will never let you make your own currency.” and this year, Bitcoin has been welcomed with opened arms by the United States government.

There is also common advice around investing, that was correct for a time, however I’m not sure it was:

• “Music isn’t a VC backable business”, and then Spotify happens.

• “Games are hits driven”, so what, so is VC… So many games I wished I backed.

Certainty does give people comfort, and sometimes it makes the world more efficient to believe that things will continue to be true. However, I believe a great way to stumble onto a great investment thesis is to listen in conversations on where people say “Always” or “Never”, and then assume that the opposite will occur…. which it will.

The key is then to measure how big of an impact of that trend flipping will be, and then investing towards it.

If you find yourself energized by that change, it’s very fulfilling to invest towards that world, because Venture Capital at is base is about bringing the future here faster.

The moral debates I’m tending to see right now:

1. What use does the academic institution have?

2. Can scientific breakthroughs be created by non-academic “Scientists”

3. Should we live forever?

4. Should we bring back the dead?

There are many things that seem to be on the brink of being possible, that once were impossible.

I believe that in the next three years, humans may cure cancer, disease, give people super powers, and extend life by 50 years. If that’s true, then the Boost VC Bio Residency could be the most important program in the history of Venture Capital.

Applications are due in July for the Bio Residency! (July 31)

Boost VC is launching a 2-week Bio Residency for early-stage biotech founders ready to change the world. We believe this is a once-in-a-generation moment where science fiction becomes biology—where founders will 3D print livers, cure cancer, grow organs, enable 200-year lifespans… or even give us super powers.

Biology is going through a renaissance—CRISPR, mRNA, AI tools, Ozempic, at-home diagnostics—but there’s no gravitational center for Bio founders to collide, build, and scale. We’re fixing that.

🔬 What is the Bio Residency?

A two-week immersive experience at Boost VC HQ in San Mateo, CA—our mission: help ambitious bio founders turn radical science into real businesses. Give Super Powers to EVERYONE!

💸 What you get:

• $500K for 10%

• Free housing + office space in the heart of Silicon Valley

• Hands-on programming to help you sharpen your story, clarify your plan, and prep to raise a killer pre-seed

• Mentorship, office hours & workshops with legendary Bio founders and VCs

• A science fair-style demo day & happy hour with Bio VCs and fellow deep tech obsessives

• 2 weeks of continued coworking & housing post-program to keep building momentum

🧪 Who we want:

• Mission-driven founders

• Breakthrough ideas in Bio, Longevity, Health, or Deep Science

• Scientists with a rebellious spirit (and a product roadmap)

• Builders turning research into companies

This is your call to action. Let’s build the Bio future we all deserve.

👉 Apply now: [Application]
⏳ Deadline: [July 31]
📍 Location: Boost VC HQ, San Mateo, CA

As a first check investor in startups for the last 15 years I’ve had to think about my relationship with risk a lot, and how it applies. Investment is all about risk. The risk you take defines the game you are playing and because it defines the game will also define the outcome.

I’m attempting to define “First Check” writing separately from “Venture Capital” here. First check writers have the least amount of information, and in the grand scheme of things have to take on the most investment risk, because of this, you also have the opportunity to receive that largest reward.

The pendulum of risk fluctuates between two states: Certainty and Skepticism. And understanding the peer pressure of certainty can help you make great First check writing decisions.

A good example is that over Covid, certainty was on “Remote work,” and “Low Capex” businesses, and the skepticism was on “In person” and “High capex” (High cost of things you had to pay for, rockets, nuclear). This is a long way of saying “Certain on software, skeptical on Aerospace.” However if you were a first check writer over Covid - the best place to have been investing would have been Aerospace and Defense for results today.

The attention of the investors is unpredictable, but understanding the guard rails of certainty and skepticism end up being valuable skills. A good question today for first check writers would be “What are people most certain about in tech today?” and then thinking about “where are people most skeptical, but it’s important to build?”

Taking more risk, which means betting against certainty, ends up being where a first check investor gets pricing power and makes the biggest impact. This has been in the culture of Boost VC from the beginning - where can we go to be the most useful with our capital — it’s never about focusing on the current thing for us.

There’s a shortage of innovation in the university research space as well as the healthcare industry. In the US that means we have regulated ourselves out of new products that could change our lives for the better. WHICH MEANS IT’S TIME FOR STARTUPS TO DO THEIR THING!!

There is a societal change occuring. People are more comfortable than ever to do health at home. It could be the distrust in hospitals, but over Covid, we were doing our own at home testing, and now there’s a huge rise in people injecting themselves with Ozempic. This habit change, along with the rise of Artificial Intelligence quality is going to take the world by storm. The New Limit team talked about this during their most recent progress update.

So with that, I would like to request for startups interested in building Bio-Driven super soldiers. There are a lot of startups helping the front-lines with technology, but I have seen very little focused on the business model of government, along with biology led innovation.

Experience matters less than Courage and energy, because we are entering into new industry of innovation. I believe more than half of the future budget of the DoD will be focused on biology… so lets innovate here!!

Find me:

• Better ways to take medicine

• Better ways to sequence proteins

• Better ways to unlock strength/recovery/brain power

• MRNA was huge unlock, what else does it unlock!!!

Let’s use the technology of biology to build super humans.

• It’s different but very real

• They raised the bar on what is “normal”

• The regulatory environment allows for moving quickly

The longer part of the story is this, my Dad and I went to Prospera on a business trip, here’s a picture of my Dad “Monkeying” around. We were there for a few reaasons — Boost VC is an investor, and I wanted to experience it, and additionally we had an episode of “Meet The Drapers” to film in Prospera, and we weren’t sure what the expect.

For those of you who have not heard anything about Prospera, it is a developer of Freedom zones. They have one of these Economic Freedom Zones on 300 acres, on Roatan, in Honduras.

First thing that happened is that we drive in and there’s a building at the top of the hill that has a Bitcoin class going on. This building is the “Bitcoin education center”, so we are obviously interested. They have come here to do an “adoption of Bitcoin” lecture for people. My Dad immediately starts to lecture these people on what Bitcoin is and how to spread the word.

So the other thing, I haven’t mentioned yet is that Roatan is gorgious. After we leave the Bitcoin Education Center, we drive to the resort, past a pool, tennis courts and a golf course… weird - not what you were expecting in a “Freedom Zone?” Us either!

Suddenly my brain was going “am I on vacation, or working?”

Picture of my Dad lecturing at the Bitcoin Education Center.

We get to the resort, where we are staying, and the view is incredible. Houses 55 people for vacations. We drove by tennis courts and a beach club on the way down.

Up to this point, Bitcoin had been a sign around town, but other than that — Its just a great vacation place. If you swim out a couple hundred yards, you are at the second largest coral reef in the world.

… But I’m in Roatan to see deals. So I was trying to remedy this issue with haste… and I didn’t have to wait long.

They take us out to dinner, 30 min drive away, where they have set up pitches for 13 startups. 3 minutes each before dinner.

Here is a taste:

1. Replace body, but moving head onto cyborg, for longevity.

2. Replace body, by moving head onto other body for longevity.

3. Dissect human brain (dead person) for ML training data.

My Dad and I went through the 13 pitches. My Dad leaned over to me and whispered:

“8 out of 13 of these are investable… I think we are in the right place.” I would take a second and digest that, my Dad and I traveled to Central America, and more than 50% of the pitches, we felt were investable. The density of talent was next level, and they were all thinking different than I had seen in a long time.

I should also explain that Prospera is the special economic zone, and Infinita is the bio hacking District of the zone, where they have compiled freethinkers and doers to make the world a better place in the field of Biology. It’s pulled talented people from all over the world who have been stifled by regulations. So the startups were largely recruited through Infinita - a Boost VC Portfolio company led by Niklas Anzinger, a great free thinker and leader.

We headed back to the resort and talked about the pitches, they were awesome, they were future looking and extremely taboo concepts. They were the edge of the rebellion, which is what I am on a constant search for.

So we wake up the next day, and Erick Brimen the founder of Prospera boats us 200 meters to another pier.

They drive us in a golf cart up to a first building in the middle of a jungle:

“This is our first attempt! You asked what I did with the Series A money… this is it! With our economic zone, were able to build here 10x faster due to our permitting process.” The first building was more like a small apartment complex, maybe 12 rooms, but overlooking an amazing view of the ocean.

Erick, was born in Venezuela and schooled in the United States. This is going to be his life’s work. As I’ve gotten to know Erick, I become more and more impressed with what he has accomplished.

We go a little further and see another building that is for carpentry, they highlight the robots that they use in order to accelerate their building process. And then at the end of the road you see a huge building.

“We permitted to do this in 3 weeks.”

“Duna”, their landmark building, is 10 stories high and gorgeous. At the top there’s a drone landing pad, and inside there are “Districts” of startups, including Infinita.

At Boost VC, I’ve always been obsessed with finding what I call “the soul of the rebellion”, where are the greatest minds focused on harder problems? I believe I found it in Prospera, I found something more different than I had seen in any other places. It felt foreign in a way that Bitcoin felt foreign 10 years ago.

Boost VC invested in Prospera alongside Coinbase Ventures recently. I think this is the beginning of something that the world needs. Free thinkers becoming free doers and I’m here for it. I believe Bio startups that spend time in Prospera, will have an edge against any that don’t. I believe that the same will become true in any industry that has high regulations and stifled innovation.

This Freedom Zone is real and free. Its early, but it’s going to be exciting to watch.

Twice a year, investors get a chance to see 35 startups advancing science and technology nominated by our ecosystem of deep tech VCs at Deep Tech Demo Day. We have been investing in Deep Tech for a dozen years, and this event is our way to define “The Pulse” of Deep Tech for everyone!

Over the years, companies who have presented have gone on to raise millions more in additional funding including:

• Nunu AI - $6M Seed in Q4 2024. Link

• Zbiotics - $12M Series A Link

• Starfish Space - $29M Series A Link

• Radiant Nuclear - $100M Series C Link

Imagine if you had met the founders of Starfish Space or Radiant when they were raising their Seed? On April 2, you’ll get that same opportunity—35 times over.

Deep Tech at Every Stage.

Deep Tech investing is important to defining the future, and that’s why we love doing this event!

To Qualify for this event, every startup has to have someone nominate them and additionally be “Pre-Seed to Series A Ready.” It’s a highly curated group of startups every year. This year we have partnered with 17 Deep Tech funds to nominate startups for the event. From this process we have 35 startups for investors to invest in!

Deep tech isn’t just growing—it’s transforming entire industries. We partnered with 17 other Deep Tech Funds to nominate 35 startups across stages and sectors to showcase these startups on April 2.

From revolutionizing infrastructure to personalizing health care, these aren’t incremental improvements or software optimizations—these are category-defining companies solving trillion-dollar problems.

For the previous 4 years, I have been cornering the market on the Invincible #1 comic book. If you have ever tried to find this comic book at a comic-con… you can’t… because I own so many!

By “Corner the market” I mean buy a controlling interest in a specific comic book. I’ve told a few of you, but I’m not sure anyone knows how deep this cut goes. So, lets start at the beginning:

My family has collected sports cards and comic books our whole lives. Comic books have been my comfort food through good times and bad. I remember when I was six, we went to a local comic book shop that was winding down, and they were selling 5 cent comic books. My Dad turned to me, my brother and sister and said:

“If you can carry it out, I’ll buy it for you,”

That moment I acquired hundreds of comics and it set me down a path of love for the characters and stories.

I’m 38 now, and still absolutely love reading comic books, but in the last decade have started to collect as well. When investing, as we do in Venture Capital, the key was finding a thesis!!

Some years ago, I was inspired because my brother had started to collect a perfect set of a specific type of card. It’s a niche/nostalgic set, and I don’t want to blow up his spot, but it made me think “What should I collect?”

* The things you need to know in order to read on are -

1. First appearances of characters are like rookie cards (The most sought after cards)

2. Comic books that have been graded by a 3rd party for quality are called “Slabbed books.” The goal is to get a higher “Grade” on the slabbed book.

My favorite comic book series is a comic book called “Invincible,” it’s also now the #1 show on Amazon Prime. I bought one #1 invincible at THE Comic-Con in San Diego in 2018…. and then I had a thought… What if I owned all of the Invincible #1s?

So I did some research. In 2003, Robert Kirkman released Invincible. The first print was a small one: 10,000 copies. However, as a collector, I know that I want graded first editions of the comic book!

There’s a service on the internet called GoCollect. It has the data on all of these collectibles.

This image shows the census data as of writing this post, in the category of 9.0 Slabbed books and above. So as you can see there were roughly 1,650. This means there have been more graded in the last year, because when I started this 4 years ago, there were only 1,300 graded.

So I had a general goal of “Figure out how to buy as many as I could of this comic book.”

So I bought one. Then another. Then another…

The first one I ever bought was at Comic-Con in San Diego (the mecca of comic book enthusiasm). The next one was eBay. Same with the following 10, but there were limited supply on ebay, so I started to call local comic book stores. I then hired a sales person on commission to start dialing for dollars for stores around the country. I eventually called a friend who I knew had some connection to the company — Turns out he was on the board. He connected me to someone who owned 30 of the comics! so that was a jackpot… this continued… for years. I just kept hunting down every lead. I eventually invested in a company called Shortboxed, which was a marketplace that sold slabbed comic books!

Eventually I spoke with my friend, Jon Goldman and asked if I could invest in Skybound, the company that owns the rights to the IP of the comic, they also own the rights to the Walking Dead.

I pursued this interest to the depths of my abilities.

In the last 4 years on this mission, I have:

• Called hundreds of comic book stores in multiple states

• Used Ebay alerts to the best of it’s ability

• Called hundreds of people who might have a lead on some comics

• Connected to Skybound, co-founded by Kirkman who created Invincible (And the Walking Dead)

• Joined the board of Skybound, learned a lot about the business of comics

• And lots more things

This side quest I took as a fun comic book investor has led to startup investments and relationships, and networks I couldn’t have dreamed of.

Which brings me to the completion of my journey. I sought out to corner the market, and I ended up at 143 of the original 1300 in existence. This means I own more than 10% of the quest I was targeting. (Now there are 1600, in existence, I still feel great about owning the percentage I do)

But there are a few reasons I’m stopping:

When you start a quest, you don’t know where it will take you. I started with a curiosity, and ended up on the board of the company. I have met the creator of the comic book, artists and the leadership of the organization. I’ve learned why comic books are important to the world, and made great friends along the way. I may have more knowledge on the business of comic books than almost any single person outside the industry.

So from my perspective I SUCCEEDED!! I took this to its natural end. I want to find a new quest to pursue and in order to do that, I have to mentally close the book on this one.

The things I’ve learned:

• To corner a market, either move fast, or be patient

• When you are cornering anything, the price will inevitably go up

• Side quests have verbal virality

• Your curiosities lead you to tight networks

• Things you are interested in, that are important to you, are interesting to other people

• I started out buying a comic, and now I’m on the board…. curiosities and quests have a way of compounding no matter how trivial they may sound

• The universe has a way of giving you opportunities if you ask for them

• There’s a large opportunity in comic books and early ideation of characters

• Comic books stores and distributors forgot who their customers were - kids, and charge too much for their product now

• Comic books is the lowest cost way to create intellectual property around a character

There are millions more things I can say I’ve learned. It’s been a blast.

Thank you to everyone who helped me. Special thanks to my wife for tolerating my madness. Thank you to my partners (Brayton and Maddie) at Boost VC, who realize I’m an idiot and love me for it. Thanks to my friends, Erik Franks, Baha Hariri and Brandon Goldman for following along and not doubting the quest. Thanks to Jon Goldman for bringing me into the Skybound family. DA for welcoming me with open arms. And thanks especially to the creator Robert Kirkman for inspiring such a ridiculous quest.

Because if you are going to corner the market, you have to be …

At Boost VC, I’m on a crusade to short academia and free science to enable more breakthroughs.

Thank you everyone for reaching out and discussing this concept with me. I have had founders, parents, and scientists reach out to challenge the idea, or discuss best ways forward. I LOVE IT.

One broken piece of the classic academic institution is that fact that the university will drive scientists into debt, and profit off of that. I’m asking you to go a different way. I’m asking that to not go into debt, and to take a $50k investment from us!

The most successful experiment Boost VC ran last year was to invest $50k in founders just starting out.

Today I’m announcing that we are going to be investing $50k into founding SCIENTISTS who choose not to get a PHD, and choose to apply their science to the world.

So that’s the deal!

• You don’t have to go into debt

• Boost VC will invest $50k

• In return we will receive 3% of your project

• You will get connected to the Boost VC network of founders

I want to find people from around the world. This is not a local to the US problem. LET US INNOVATE!!!!

APPLY HERE.