Announcing another unicorn for Good AI
Hi friends,
The past week was a great week!
With its $100M funding announcement, Playco has joined the ranks of SoFi to become another unicorn in our portfolio.
I still remember the day when I visited Playco ( formerly known as Weeby.co ) at its humble downtown Mountain View office. After articulating their vision of becoming the Unity of mobile games, Martin Hunt ( CTO ) immediately impressed me. It was 2014, the emerging standards of HTML5 and Augmented Reality is starting to take shape.
Despite having achieved successes on the social network platform, games such as Farmville have run into a lot of scaling challenges, especially on the mobile platform. And at that very moment, I realized that a perfect storm is looming, and the mobile gaming industry is ready to be disrupted.
Hailing from Stanford's famed Start-X program, Michael Carter and his team have an impressive track record. With backing from Matt Ocko ( Data Collective ), Jerry Yang ( Yahoo , AMECloud ), Alsop Louie ( backer of Niantic, creator of Pokemon Go ) and Rakuten (Japan's eCommerce leader), my decision to invest was quite an easy one.
Finally, I want to do a shoutout to Thuy Truong for introducing me to Playco. Thuy passed away in 2019 after battling cancer for many years. Thuy's GreenGar is the very first angel investment I made in my career. After the shutdown of her startup, Thuy joined Playco and introduced me to the team there.
It has been an honor to have worked with Thuy and she is missed dearly.
Best,
Darwin
Email: darwin@goodai.capital | Linkedin: darwinling | Twitter: @darwinl
Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna win the Nobel Prize for groundbreaking CRISPR discovery
Congratulations to Dr. Doudna and Dr. Charpentier for winning the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their groundbreaking work using CRISPR/Cas9 in gene editing.
Being one of the most revolutionary technologies in our generation, CRISPR has had a major impact on diagnostics and therapeutics, allowing medicine to become more personalized. In less than a decade, researchers have used CRISPR-Cas9 to develop genome-edited crops, insects, genetic models, and experimental human therapies. Moreover, clinical trials are underway to use the technique to treat sickle cell anemia, hereditary blindness, and cancers.
Like any groundbreaking technology, the risks, ethical, social, and safety concerns need to be assessed worldwide. While CRISPR can be applied in many areas, the world discovered recently when a Chinese scientist used it to alter the DNA of human embryos. This has sparked a sharp rebuke by the international scientific community, and the scientist was later jailed in China for the work.
Despite CRISPR's vast potential, much needs to be done. During an interview with Fortunes for the 25 ideas that will shape the 2020s, Dr. Doudna indicated that she will be focusing more on questions such as cost and access. Specifically, she will be focusing on new technological developments to help manufacture molecules for gene editing and new medications.
Such focus has also inspired Good AI's investment thesis in lowering drug costs and expanding accessibility. At Good AI, we look for the most transformative startups that can leverage AI to improve supply chain and manufacturing efficiency, streamlining clinical trials, and speeding up drug discovery.