I’ve had a pretty eventful last week, but didn’t have time to write about my experiences until now. All of us interns at Illumio were invited to the a16z Portfolio Showcase because a16z is a VC that backs Illumio. We met 6 really cool companies there: Freenome, Cardiogram, Astranis, Databricks, Lime, and Skydio.
Freenome is a genomics startup that is using the breakthroughs in machine learning and AI to try to detect and cure early stage cancer. Verily is heavily invested in Freenome, which is why their headquarters is also at Verily! They are still in the research phase, but there is promising growth. The way it was described to me is that they are using machine learning to detect the effects and changes in the blood from the disease, like looking for the smoke to find the fire.
Similarly, Cardiogram is a company whose app monitors your health(through an Apple Watch or Fitbit for example) and uses the information to try to detect if you will have heart diseases or such using deep learning. Yes, it sounds very similar to Freenome. Cardiogram is more focused on heart diseases, and are building a neural network called DeepHeart to help with predicting cardiovascular diseases and with other problems as well. The startup is only 9 PEOPLE, and I met with the only intern at the first a16z event and reconnected with him here. Their team is very strong(you can see all of the startup team members on their website) and I look forward to see what they bring to the table.
I have to take a moment to appreciate what Freenome and Cardiogram are doing: using computer science techniques and applying to the medicine world. I think there are two kinds of way to push the frontier of computer science: 1) Furthering the knowledge and technology of computer science and 2)Using that knowledge and technology to help out other fields and sectors. They are both equally important, but especially at UC Berkeley since it is a research institute, I see a lot of 1) and not so much of 2). There is a lot of awesome research going deeper into AI and ML, but not so much applications and collaborations between fields. That is slowly changing though, with Berkeley Institute of Data Science integrating data science modules for the humanities classes(see the project I was involved in for SOC130AC!). Anyways, both are noble pursuits, but I believe one day I want to use computer science to help out in the field of environmental science or mental health. These are two fields I feel strongly about, and yet they have not have as much exposure to the computer science technology. Which is why I have much respect for these two companies to use ML/AI/deep learning to try to help the field of medicine.
Astranis is a startup that is trying to get internet to everyone in the world by putting up satellites in outer space instead of cell towers. And if that doesn’t sound dope, I’m not sure what does. They are still in the early stages(as all of these startups are) and are working on the prototype satellite(which I hear is going to be at another intern event!). One of the questions we had for them was that satellites are a lot farther than cell towers, so how will the connection speed be? It turns out that it is meant for more people who don’t have internet and don’t need that high speed connection to play videos. It’s for more practical uses like checking email and lower bandwidth usage, which would still be a revolutionary breakthrough for the 4 billion people who don’t have internet.
Lime has smart bikes and electric scooters parked around some areas that you can pick up and use as a method of transportation. They are still growing, but I’ve started to see them pop up around Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, and one of my intern friends is always super hype when he sees one of them. One of the interns turned full time told me he worked on optimizing the positions of where they put the bikes and scooters, which is a complex problem due to bikes and scooters also having different audiences.
Databricks’ main product is a runtime environment and platform to run Apache Spark and make big data analysis quicker and easier. What’s super awesome about Databricks is that a lot of its founders and board members are actually professors at Berkeley! It started out of Berkeley and I think it’s awesome that the professors here are teaching, doing research, and creating their own startups! Databricks isn’t the only startup that’s come out of Berkeley professors; there are a few more coming out that are still in its early stages. From talking with some of the engineers, one of the big areas they are working on is integrating Databricks with other cloud services such as Azure, as well as scalability(which is a common theme among most startups).
Last but not least, Skydio makes drones that follow you to take videos. It’s a self flying camera. You simply select who you want the drone to follow on your phone, and then it will follow you and take videos. How do I know this? I volunteered to be the “target” at the showcase and I ran around awkwardly on the rooftop trying to hide and trick the drone while it followed me. I'll try to upload the video I have so you can see how awkward I was. They are using sophisticated computer vision technique combined with autonomous robotics technology, which I think is two super cool fields to be involved in right now.
This has been a rather long post even though I tried to keep the companies descriptions short. I try to keep my posts short so that it doesn't get too long winded. But I think something that I see in these companies is that they are trying to help the world in some way or change it for the better, whether it is life-changing such as preventing disease, or making the world a more fun place with self flying cameras and accessible electric scooters. These are noble pursuits to have in your career. If you have the opportunity, you should do something in your career to make the world a better place in an aspect you find important.